The woes confronting Europe's auto industry surfaced dramatically Thursday when France's PSA Peugeot Citroen announced 8,000 job cuts and a plant closure and Germany's Opel got its fourth CEO in less than three years. The two automakers – one a French national icon and the other the principal European subsidiary of General Motors Co. –
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David Beckham has suggested he is not the right man to light the Olympic flame to officially open the London Games, saying on Thursday the honour should go to an Olympian who has won gold medals. Admitting his disappointment at failing to make Britain's Olympic soccer squad, Beckham took himself out of the running for
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Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told a German newspaper in an interview to be published on Friday that his country would take full liability for the European loans to its banking system and added that there was no risk of losses for creditors. De Guindos told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his country needed
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Bulgaria's fiscal deficit should drop below 1% of GDP this year, beating the official 1.3% target and enabling the country to avoid tapping global debt markets, Finance Minister Simeon Djankov said on Thursday. Bulgaria registered a small surplus at the end of May, showing one of the European Union's poorest states is on track to
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The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday it had found policy delays in a number of areas of the Greek bailout program and was open to ideas on how to reach the key objectives of the economic package. The IMF made the comments after its mission to Greece completed initial talks with the country's new
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Bank of Cyprus said on Thursday it had appointed Yiannis Kypri as chief executive following Tuesday’s resignation of Andreas Eliades, the group CEO for the past eight years. Kypri, a chartered accountant and graduate of the London School of Economics, held the post of deputy CEO for the past two years having joined the bank
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European and IMF inspectors have postponed a trip to Cyprus next week to discuss the island's bailout request because they need more time, the finance ministry said on Thursday, which means the island will probably not wrap up talks this month as hoped. Cyprus sought emergency financial aid from its EU partners on June 25
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A drive by the far-right Golden Dawn party to get Greeks to donate blood only for their fellow citizens has outraged doctors and medical authorities, who have slammed the initiative as racist and inhuman. Golden Dawn, which enjoyed unprecedented success in last month's election after promising to rid Greece of all immigrants, put up posters
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Greek unemployment hit a record 22.5% in April and may keep edging higher, with even the key tourism sector unlikely to provide more than fleeting support over the summer as visitors stay away from the recession-hit country. The jobless rate for April was up from a revised 22% in March, Greece's statistics service ELSTAT said.
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A delay of a few months in Greece's privatisation drive means the near-bankrupt country will only be able to complete the sale of its state lottery firm and a building in Athens, its privatisation chief told Reuters on Wednesday. That would mean the country falls well short of the more than 3 billion euros it
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