Latest news with #Merkel
Business Insider
12-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
William Blair Remains a Hold on Hillman Solutions (HLMN)
William Blair analyst Ryan Merkel maintained a Hold rating on Hillman Solutions today. The company's shares closed today at $7.77. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. According to TipRanks, Merkel is a 4-star analyst with an average return of 9.5% and a 66.39% success rate. Merkel covers the Industrials sector, focusing on stocks such as Aaon, Beacon Roofing Supply, and Fastenal Company. The word on The Street in general, suggests a Moderate Buy analyst consensus rating for Hillman Solutions with a $10.83 average price target. The company has a one-year high of $12.08 and a one-year low of $6.55. Currently, Hillman Solutions has an average volume of 1.61M. Based on the recent corporate insider activity of 38 insiders, corporate insider sentiment is positive on the stock. This means that over the past quarter there has been an increase of insiders buying their shares of HLMN in relation to earlier this year. Most recently, in May 2025, Robert O. Kraft, the CFO & Treasurer of HLMN bought 140,000.00 shares for a total of $992,600.00.
Business Insider
12-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
William Blair Sticks to Their Hold Rating for Global Industrial Company (GIC)
William Blair analyst Ryan Merkel maintained a Hold rating on Global Industrial Company today. The company's shares closed today at $27.70. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. According to TipRanks, Merkel is a 4-star analyst with an average return of 9.5% and a 66.39% success rate. Merkel covers the Industrials sector, focusing on stocks such as Aaon, Beacon Roofing Supply, and Fastenal Company. The word on The Street in general, suggests a Moderate Buy analyst consensus rating for Global Industrial Company with a $30.00 average price target. GIC market cap is currently $1.08B and has a P/E ratio of 17.89.
Irish Times
10-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Germany loosens the purse strings in spite of recession
In Germany , it's always a feast or a famine. After years of dry-bread balanced budgets and thin investment gruel, the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz has embraced jam-for-all politics. On Tuesday, his federal finance minister Lars Klingbeil presented a draft double budget for 2025-2026 with investment worth €115.7 billion alone this year – up 55 per cent on 2024. The spending surge is thanks largely to a special infrastructure fund agreed by the future coalition partners just after February's federal election. That fund's capital, borrowed outside the balance sheet and European deficit rules, is designed to be spent over the coming decade. About €500 billion will be available to repair and replace crumbling infrastructure, neglected in the Merkel years. READ MORE Another arm of the fund comprises an effective blank cheque for boosting German defence capabilities in line with Nato commitments. Even without the off-balance-sheet trickery, Germany is set to borrow €82 billion this year: no small sum given the country's economy is in its third consecutive year of recession. The extra debt won't thrill the European Commission or Eurogroup head Paschal Donohoe. But Germany still remains well below debt-to-GDP ratios of the UK or US and, so far at least, investors seem sanguine about the extra borrowing if it ends the fiscal famine and stimulates growth. Less impressed are the German voters conditioned in the past decade to believe that all borrowing is bad news. Particularly gloomy are centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) voters, who were promised the exact opposite of what they are now getting. Opposition politicians, who backed changing debt rules to enable the investment fund in March, now accuse Klingbeil of breaking his word. They say he has shunted planned investments in roads, railways and even defence into the investment fund to create fiscal space for expensive clientelist welfare gifts. On Tuesday, a leading CDU ally of Merz conceded that the hard work of consolidation and reform – in particular of Germany's unsustainable pension system – lies ahead. After February's snap election he said Tuesday's budget, seven months late, was about 'buying time'. In Berlin's new jam factory, time really is money.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Chancellor of lies:' AfD's Weidel skewers Merz over first two months
German far-right leader Alice Weidel on Wednesday launched a fierce attack on Chancellor Friedrich Merz over his young administration's record since taking office in May. "For the bitterly disappointed citizens, you are already the chancellor of lies, Mr Merz, whose broken campaign promises could fill entire catalogues," said Weidel, the co-leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). In a speech during a general debate in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, Weidel criticized Merz sharply over the controversial decision to cut electricity taxes only for large industries, agriculture and forestry, instead of for the entire population. The measure was included in the coalition agreement between Merz's conservative bloc - the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union - and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), but was left out of the draft 2025 budget. "Your word is worth nothing, ever when it stands in black and white in your meagre coalition agreement," said Weidel, calling Merz a "paper chancellor" under the spell of the SPD. In her speech, she also attacked the new government's migration policy, blasting "window dressing exercises" such as Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt's much-criticized effort to toughen up border controls. She further said the government's plans were being financed with an "orgy of debts" and criticized support for Ukraine. In response, Merz rejected Weidel's "half-truths, slander and personal disparagement." Amid the heated scenes, Bundestag President Julia Klöckner called on lawmakers not to "belittle each other personally here and accuse each other of lying."
Euractiv
09-07-2025
- Health
- Euractiv
How Germany's great conservative hope became Friedrich Merz's greatest liability
BERLIN – There was a time when the world considered Jens Spahn, the pugnacious German conservative, as his country's chancellor-in-waiting. Young, gay and provocative, Spahn shattered the mould of the stuffy, pipe-smoking, Kohl-era German conservative of yore. Even the left-leaning Guardian was enthralled, calling him in 2016 "the man who could replace Merkel". That was then. Though Spahn went on to become a minister and now holds one of the most powerful positions in German politics as leader of the Christian Democrats' parliamentary group – a post that served as a final stepping stone for both Friedrich Merz and Angela Merkel en route to the chancellery – few would put money on his prospects these days. In recent weeks, the 45-year-old former health minister has become mired in the first major scandal of Merz's chancellorship. The affair, which concerns the role Spahn played during the pandemic in doling out mask contracts, has reverberated amid a broader reckoning in Germany over how the government and health officials dealt with the pandemic. The optics are devastating. Spahn's ministry spent some €6 billion on 5.8 billion face masks – often without a competitive tender and in some cases at inflated prices. Some procurement contracts went to a company from his small Westphalian constituency, others were linked to recommendations from fellow party members. Spahn denies any wrongdoing. A Merkel critic Spahn – tall, square-jawed, and articulate – is an unusual star of the Christian Democrats' conservative wing. Having entered the German Parliament at only 22, the openly gay MP made a name for himself as a critic of Merkel's liberal migration policy during the mid-2010s. Spahn's willingness to speak truth to power – even in his own ranks – helped make the telegenic young conservative the face of the CDU's new generation. Once Spahn's rising prominence made him impossible to ignore, a reluctant Merkel relented and brought him into her cabinet in 2018 as health minister, a daunting brief that was widely seen as a test. Two years later, the once-in-a-century pandemic hit, triggering a series of fateful mistakes by Spahn that now threaten his political future. Murky mask deals Germany's National Court of Auditors concluded in 2025 that only a third of all the masks ordered under Spahn were eventually used. More than half were destroyed. Some of the orders were not accepted by the ministry due to quality issues, prompting lawsuits from suppliers. The court had already criticised Spahn's approach in 2021, but the lawmaker managed to emerge largely unscathed from the revelations until he took on his new post as the Christian Democrats' parliamentary chief. A probe commissioned by Spahn's successor, Karl Lauterbach, a Social Democrat (SPD), and authored by Margaretha Sudhof, a civil servant and fellow SPD member, surfaced in April, just weeks after Spahn took on his new role. The 170-page report, published in full in June, suggests Spahn ignored warnings from expert staff about the mask contracts. An un-redacted version of the report was recently leaked to the media and contains Sudhoff's scathing judgments on some of the deals – among them, contracts that paid €7 per mask, prices that were "difficult to comprehend." Spahn, who has since undergone a hearing in front of the budget committee, insisted he acted in good faith. 'It was a once-in-a-century crisis and an emergency situation' he said. 'In times of need, having something is more important than needing it.' He acknowledged taking financial risks to procure scarce masks and "first talking to people I knew in an emergency," but denied any impropriety. Internal calculus Years on, the mask contracts are causing a headache for Merz, even though he wasn't in government at the time. The scandal hit just as Merz's approval ratings had started to recover following a backlash over concessions he made during coalition talks. Opposition parties have been pushing for an official parliamentary inquiry, which could lead to months of damaging headlines and testimony. Parliamentary metrics, however, are likely to work in Merz's favour: The Greens and The Left, two left-wing parties, would have to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to reach the required quorum for setting up an inquiry – probably a bridge too far for both. The opposition would thus need support from at least eight defectors from the CDU and their coalition partners, the Social Democrats, who are nominally bound by coalition discipline. Still, the optics are damaging. The current health minister, Nina Warken, also from the CDU, first refused to publish the report. Then she published only a redacted version of the report, citing privacy concerns and lashing out at Sudhof's methodology. The latter has been a preferred line of attack of Spahn's CDU peers, who have so far unreservedly backed Spahn. The CDU's number two, General Secretary Carsten Linnemann, said on Monday that he saw "nothing new" in the unredacted version, but "subjective, personal statements about Mr Spahn by Ms Sudhof." Merz had previously criticised the Sudhof's report for failing to consult Spahn himself. Spahn's future Above all, the report puts a question mark over Spahn's credibility and political future. He had long had a sense for staying on the winning side: first opposing Merz's second bid for the party leadership in favour of the subsequent winner Armin Laschet, then switching camps when Laschet failed to win the chancellery in 2021. Spahn also shook off a previous scandal involving a loan he received from a local bank on whose board he served. Spahn and his husband used to fund the purchase of a multi-million-euro villa in Berlin, but sold it in 2023 amid a public uproar over the credit. Like that affair, the latest uproar has raised fundamental questions about Spahn's judgement and credibility. So far, Merz is sticking with Spahn. The only question is for how long. (mm)
