European Press Roundup: Munich Re's Ergo Eyes Amazon's Alexa to Reach Customers, and Italian Lender CDP Weighs Open Fiber Sta...

In Europe today, markets are up slightly as investors greeted a fresh round of stimulus measures from China, and Ryanair announces plans to buy Malta Air. The top business story: The EU blocks ThyssenKrupp's planned steel merger with India's Tata Steel. Read about the above topics on Dow Jones Newswires or WSJ.com.

In Other Media...

The Munich Re-owned insurance group Ergo wants to offer customers more opportunities to purchase insurance via voice-activated assistants such as Amazon's Alexa. Ergo began offering customers travel-sickness insurance via Alexa last year and plans to branch out into selling other types of insurance this way, Ergo Germany CEO Achim Kassow says. -Der Tagesspiegel

Italian state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, or CDP, may sell its 50% stake in Open Fiber to Telecom Italia in exchange for Telecom's shares. Telecom Italia's board is slated to meet on August 1 to discuss Open Fiber. -Il Sole 24 Ore

Huawei says it plans to continue cooperating with Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Germany and Telefonica Deutschland as they build up their LTE and 5G mobile networks despite the U.S.'s boycott threats. "We expect to work closely with these three companies as they set up their future 5G networks," Huawei executive David Wang says. -Rheinische Post

Dutch cities have shown little enthusiasm for the Dutch government's so-called weed experiment, in which all coffee shops--where marijuana products can be bought--in these cities would be supplied by legal and controlled weed growers for four years. The Netherlands' five biggest cities haven't signed up for the initiative, with the mayor of Amsterdam saying it's impossible to supply all of the city's 175 coffee shops with weed meeting these conditions. -De Volkskrant

The president of the Association of German Banks Hans-Walter Peters says he thinks further consolidation in the European banking sector is inevitable given the tough competition from the U.S. "European banking champions are definitely something positive," Peters says, noting that European banks are now overlooked in some transactions because their U.S. competitors are so dominant. -Handelsblatt

French video game developer and producer Ubisoft has followed in the footsteps of Google and Microsoft and unveiled its new gaming subscription service, called UPLAY +, which will cost subscribers EUR14.99 per month. -Les Echos

Austria's Addiko Bank, the Eastern European subsidiary of the former Hypo Alpe Adria Bank, wants to list itself on Vienna's stock market with an offering of 50% of shares plus one additional share. -Der Standard

Write to Barcelona editors at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 11, 2019 09:13 ET (13:13 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.