Germanys

Elizabeth Carr is head of commercial development at Genomic Prediction, a genetic testing startup that says it will assess embryos created in IVF clinics for their future chance of common diseases and then rank them, so parents can pick the one with the best future. It’s a controversial area that has some critics anguishing over the prospect of consumer eugenics. Still, word of the company’s “health scores” for embryos is spreading via media reports and as the company starts to promote the tests to IVF clinics and at…

The reactions are mixed. Some consider this a victory, cheering as Germany moves away from an electricity source they see as dangerous and flawed. But others see it as a major potential roadblock for climate action—while nuclear plants have been shuttered left and right, coal power has chugged along, providing a huge chunk of the country’s electricity and spewing emissions all the while. Germany’s true challenge is ahead, as the country tries to meet ambitious climate goals without the steady electricity supply that…

Private equity firm Silver Lake has offered to buy Software AG in a deal that values the German business software developer at €2.2 billion ($2.42 billion).The offer price of €30 per share in cash by Silver Lake-controlled Blitz 22-449 SE represents a premium of 53% to Software AG's closing price of €19.59 on Thursday.In February 2022, Silver Lake had invested €344 million euros in the software developer's convertible bond, which upon conversion would represent nearly 9% of issued Software AG shares, the company said in a…

Apple is once again in the middle of a potential antitrust storm, this time in Germany.The German antitrust authority, Bundeskartellamt, says that Apple has now met its test for special abuse controls which means that it will continue under that designation for the next five years.The authority cited Apple's dominance in the market as well as its vertical integration as reasons for the move, saying that it has “paramount significance for competition across markets” as a result.A dominant positionIn a press release (opens…

German media giant Axel Springer warned on Tuesday that journalists risked being made obsolete by artificial intelligence. "Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was -- or simply replace it," Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner said in an internal letter to employees seen by AFP. Computers using AI would soon be better at the "aggregation of information" than human journalists, Doepfner predicted. He said media outlets must focus on generating exclusive…

This image, from September 2021, shows a BMW iX5 Hydrogen in Munich, Germany.Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe BMW Group on Monday launched a pilot fleet of hydrogen vehicles, with the German automotive giant's CEO referring to hydrogen as "the missing piece in the jigsaw when it comes to emission-free mobility."The BMW iX5 Hydrogen, which uses fuel cells sourced from Toyota and has a top speed of more than 112 miles per hour, is being put together at a facility in Munich.The car stores hydrogen in two tanks…

Wolfspeed — a US-based silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor maker — is set to build a chip factory in Germany, Handelsblatt reports. That’s a significant step for both the country’s green mobility and Europe’s chip industry. According to the newspaper, the over €2 billion-worth facility will be located at a site in southwest Saarland. Series production is expected to begin in four years. German auto supplier ZF will hold a minority stake in the factory, but will be a majority shareholder in the…

BERLIN—Germany’s chemicals giant BASF BASFY -3.51% SE said it would take a roughly 7.3-billion-euro hit, equivalent to about $7.9 billion, from the exit of its energy unit from Russia and that it expects a net loss for 2022 in the latest major corporate fallout from the war in Ukraine. After putting a stop to new projects in Russia following the start of the invasion last year, oil-and-gas producer Wintershall Dea AG, where BASF is a…

Germany’s competition regulator said Google should give its users more control over how and whether it mingles data from its various services, like its search engine and YouTube, part of a fresh wave of regulatory enforcement in Europe for big tech companies.  The country’s Federal Cartel Office said Wednesday that its preliminary conclusions found Google is violating a new German digital-competition law passed in 2021, and that it expects to order the company to give users more specific…

Fast News Orders from countries in the eurozone dropped by 10.3 percent in November while it saw a 6.8 percent decline from global markets. Recently, Germany announced its highest annual inflation in more than 70 years. (Reuters…