Europe

Greece was fined, by European Court of Justice, 10 million euro and a penalty payment of EUR 30 000 for each day of delay for failure to implement EU law on waste.

In today’s judgment, the Court held that Greece has not taken all the measures necessary for the implementation of the previous judgment of 2009. Thus, the deadline of 25 March 2013, Greece had not yet adopted a specific plan for the management of hazardous waste nor to establish an integrated and adequate network of disposal installations for hazardous waste or put in place a management-compliant "historical waste" (old waste temporarily stored at sites not used to that destination).

London is confirmed in first place for the second time in a row in the 2016 edition of the study "Cities of Opportunity" PwC, analysis that focuses on the 30 largest global financial centers. Singapore is ranked second, followed by Toronto, while Paris and Amsterdam completed the top five.

Switzerland does better than expected and accelerate its growth in the second quarter. According to information from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Swiss GDP has in fact recorded an increase of 0.6% on a quarterly basis between April and June and rose 2.0% from the previous year, better than the 0.9% expected, the strongest quarterly growth rate since the end of 2014.

The negative rates of Switzerland (-0.75%), forced down by the Central Bank to protect the franc from dangerous flare-ups against major currencies, are keeping many customers away from banks.

As Helvetia Ag told Bloomberg, keeping the cash in a box at home or at the company, costs, for each million, 1000 francs insurance, instead of one million Swiss francs in the current account has maintained an average annual cost of 7,500 francs for the customers. But the sum doesn’t include the costs of logistics or security sistems.

he European Central Bank (ECB) last week bought € 11.14 billion worth of government bonds in the week to Sept 2 as part of the Quantitative Easing program, it took the total it owns to 1 trillion euros. Including corporate, covered and asset-backed bonds, last week’s ECB purchases came in at 13.75 billion euro.This was announced by the ECB itself.

The ECB’s decision-making body will meet again on Thursday and Mario Draghi might announce the extension of the duration of QE, which officially should end in March 2017, already extended by six months.

Bayer has again increased its bid for the purchase of Monsanto with the goal of creating a new global leader in the field of seeds and pesticides. Bayer, which is attempting to mid-May to reach an agreement with Monsanto, has stated his willingness to pay $ 127.50 per share, a new increase in supply compared to $ 125 previously proposed action. The increase in supply leads to the evaluation Monsanto more than 65 billion dollars including debt, 56 billion excluding debt.

apanese companies could leave the UK. The threat came directly on the table of the Chinese G20. "Japanese companies have headquarters in the United Kingdom may decide to shift their headquarters in continental Europe where EU laws will cease to be applicable in the United Kingdom". In a document published on the Foreign Ministry website Tokyo calls on the newly British Prime Minister Theresa May to act "responsibly to minimize negative impacts on the Japanese firms."

The eurozone economy continued to expand at a generally stable pace in August. However, the rate of increase fell to a minimum of 19 months, especially because of a slower rate of expansion in Germany.
The final reading of the PMI services sector, prepared by Markit, fell to 52.8 points from 52.9 points in July and below the earlier flash estimate of 53.1.