In March, Interpol revealed details of a criminal scheme involving compromised emails, advance-payment fraud and money laundering across Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. The case involved two sales companies in Zurich and Hamburg, contracted by German health authorities to procure face masks, that were duped into making payments to what they thought was a legitimate supplier. The fraud amounted to €2.3 million. Fortunately, the funds were traced before they could be disbursed, but Interpol’s general secretary noted how the fraudsters had adapted their sales pitches to take advantage of strained supply chains following lockdown. It seems to be part of a trend. Martina Zimmerl,RBI Raiffeisen Bank International’s (RBI) head of…

Despite offering twice as much liquidity to corporates as everyone else, Germany has extended fewer state-backed coronavirus emergency loans than any other big economy in Europe. France, Spain, the UK and Italy are ahead of it in this regard. Indeed, French state development bank BPI had agreed state-backed coronavirus loans of more than €100 billion by mid-summer. By contrast, Germany’s coronavirus loans programme, managed primarily by BPI equivalent KfW, had inked less than half that number by then, despite the much bigger size of the German economy. We thought the numbers would be much higher and we are happy that they are not that high   – Lutz-Christian Funke, KfW Of the…

Owning or running a small business is like standing in front a firehose that’s blasting out an endless stream of things you should be doing. RIGHT NOW! Every day, there are a few crises to solve, employees to train, new customers to help, new industry products or services to consider, vendors or agents or salespeople who want to meet with you and a dozen or so new dot-somethings you’re supposed to sign up for and start uploading photos, updates and videos throughout the day and night. Oh, and then there’s your actual job of making or selling a product or serving a client. And what about that family you vaguely recall? If…