Iran and China signed a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement addressing economic issues amid crippling US sanctions on Tehran, according to Iranian state media.

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CEOs of the world’s most influential companies are planning what the ‘new reality’ will look like post-pandemic. The 2021 KPMG CEO Outlook Pulse Survey finds that almost half (45 percent) of global executives do not expect to see a return to a ‘normal’ course of business until sometime in 2022, as opposed to nearly one-third (31 percent) who anticipate this will happen later this year. The changes prompted by the pandemic have resulted in one-quarter (24 percent) of CEOs saying that their business model has been changed forever by the global pandemic.

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Europe’s battered banks, reporting their toughest year in a decade, are signaling that the worst of the pandemic’s damage has passed.

Profit at the 19 major EU lenders that have published results dropped below 10 billion euros for the first since Bloomberg Intelligence started collecting the data in 2010. Still, firms including SocieteGenerale SA, BNP Paribas SA and Banco Santander SA have proposed resuming payouts to shareholders as loan-loss provisions are forecast to ebb and cost-cutting efforts begin to kick in.

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Fourth-quarter output weighed down by fresh lockdowns to combat Covid resurgence

The eurozone economy fell into a double-dip contraction in the final quarter of last year, shrinking 0.7 per cent from the previous three months but outperforming economists’ expectations after fresh restrictions were imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

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The United States imposed long-anticipated sanctions on Turkey on Monday, 14 December 2020,over Ankara’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defence systems, further complicating already strained ties between the two NATO allies.

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