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FINANCE
STAT OF WEEK €1.4 billion
will go to Spain’s rolling stock manufacturer for supplying a second delivery of 56 trains under the contract it signed with Germany’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn in 2019.
BUSINESS EXTRA Sorry about that
Tasty pasty
GREGGS announced that sales have increased by 17 per cent over the last year, saying its products remained “compelling” to customers in the cost of living crisis. The bakery chain, which first opened in Newcastle in 1951, opened 63 new shops this year and extended some opening hours.
Defence gambit
AEROSPACE, defence and security company, Escribano Mechanical & Engineering, acquired 3 per cent of Indra, Spain’s leading IT and defence systems multinational. The €65 million transaction makes Escribano’s Indra’s second industrial partner and strengthens its presence in the Defence sector.
Winter duels
STRIKES wiped out more than 2.8 million working days in the UK during the ‘winter of discontent’, with 566 lost in March alone, official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed. Industrial action between October 2022 and the end of March was the worst since 1989, the ONS said.
Main concern
DESPITE the cost of living crisis, 30 per cent of Spanish consumers are more concerned about sustainability than price, EY consultants found. The tendency to take environmental factors into consideration before looking at price tags was usually generational, and more common amongst the young, researchers said.
Helping hand
FAMILY members spent £38 billion (€43.76 billion) on assisting relatives over the last five years, according to a survey by insurance firm SunLife. The most common reason amongst the over 50s was helping their children to buy a house, with 26 per cent contributing an average of £26,680 (€30,730).
Linda Hall
THE European Commission (EC) gave the goahead to Microsoft’s $69 billion (€63.21 billion) merger with Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard.
Brussels made the proviso that Microsoft had to ensure that Activision’s game catalogue was freely available on other cloud gamestreaming providers over the next 10 years.
The decision was announced weeks after the merger was blocked by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), whose chief executive Sarah Cardell defended the watchdog’s earlier decision.
It was not her intention to
