Tech News
Volkswagen’s own-brand currywurst sausage proves almost as popular as its cars amid automotive sales decline

Caught at the most daunting crossroads in its history, fallen German carmaking giant Volkswagen can take solace in one segment of its business empire that continues to boom: sausages.
Volkswagen’s 2024 earnings, released on Tuesday, revealed a 3% decline in vehicle sales alongside a 30% drop in net profits. The carmaker’s rising costs and falling demand prompted the group to agree to up to 35,000 job cuts by 2030 and German factory closures in a bid to turn around its fortunes.
Volkswagen-branded currywurst, however, is showing no signs of a similar downturn.
The VW Currywurst, affectionately designated the component number 199 398 500 A, has been serving the company’s employees and locals around its Wolfsburg headquarters since 1973.
Made in-house by a Volkswagen-employed butcher, the currywurst feeds the company’s tens of thousands of employees across its German plants. It can also be found at the Wolfsburg football stadium and in supermarkets around Germany.
The IG Metall union, which represents Volkswagen’s German workers, confirmed that Volkswagen had sold 8.552 million portions of its currywurst last year.
That’s only slightly lower than the 9 million cars the entire Volkswagen group sold last year. The currywurst sales already dwarf those of the Volkswagen brand itself, which stood at 5.2 million vehicles last year.
The company sold 6.3 million of its original currywurst in 2024, of which one in ten were consumed by the company’s workers. Another 2.2 million were sold as a hot dog version of the currywurst via retail.
The group also managed to sell 42,000 units of a vegan version of its beloved sausages.
“Volkswagen stands for innovation – on two, four and many other wheels and yes – also on the plate!” Volkswagen HR director Gunnar Kilian posted on LinkedIn on Monday.
“With over 8 million Volkswagen Genuine Curry sausages sold, we are celebrating a new sales record. But we are not resting on our laurels: Our next currywurst coup is already in the works!”
The IG Metall Union, which sparred with Volkswagen for months last year to find a way out of the carmaker’s decline, made a point of highlighting the humble sausage’s growing significance compared with its vehicles.
“For years now, Volkswagen has sold more currywursts than vehicles bearing the VW logo—although such a comparison is, of course, a matter of taste.
“One thing is certain, however: With the current 8.6 million units, VW’s currywurst sales are not only once again outpacing the core passenger car brand’s sales (2024: 4.8 million units), but are also moving closer to the cross-brand vehicle sales of the entire Group.”
The group’s head of food production promised more innovations to the VW Currywurst, including a ready-to-eat version that comes complete with another Volkswagen product, the part number 00010 ZDK-259-101, known by its more common name: ketchup.
Volkswagen sold some 629,000 bottles of its VW spiced ketchup last year, in addition to 25,000 10-liter buckets. The company for the first time distributed its ketchup to customers in the U.S. last year, with the free-of-charge Gewürz Ketchup Brand flying off the carmaker’s shelves.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
UBS follows Deutsche Bank by banning staff from working remotely on both Friday and Monday

Swiss banking giant UBS has resisted following remote working hawks like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, who’ve mandated a full return to office. It has, however, taken a leaf out of another rival’s approach.
In an internal memo circulated on Thursday, first reported by Finews, UBS told staff they would be required to work from the office at least three days a week. In addition, the bank told its 115,000 employees that they would no longer be able to work from home on a Friday followed by a consecutive Monday.
“Our working approach is office-centric with flexibility, and we ask our employees to be in the office at least three days a week. Spending enough time in the office with colleagues fosters innovation, collaboration, and team productivity,” a UBS spokesperson told Fortune.
The approach is similar to that of Deutsche Bank last year, which, in calling staff back to the office, drew a new line in the sand by banning remote Fridays and Mondays.
Many workers operating under a hybrid model opt to come into the office between Tuesday and Thursday, working their Mondays and Fridays remotely. Fridays in particular have proved popular among both bosses and employees as the remote day of choice.
The hawkish voices in the remote vs. in-office debate argue this trend has created a habit of lower productivity around the weekend as employees slow down into Saturday or ramp up more slowly to a Tuesday. Manchester United co-owner Jim Ratcliffe ordered his staff back to the office full-time in May last year when he realized email activity plunged on a Friday when most employees were remote.
One problem companies like UBS are more publicly happy to address is space. Many firms vacated office space during COVID-19 in order to cut costs when remote work looked like a permanent solution.
UBS is no different. In London, the company has consolidated staff at its Broadgate HQ, where it sublet space during the height of remote working, after it also chose not to renew its lease at 1 Golden Lane. During that time, the company also integrated employees from the newly acquired Credit Suisse into its offices, putting a further crunch on space. A move to choose between a Monday and Friday should regulate attendance through the week.
Companies have also been left frustrated by thousands of square meters of office space going unused on the more unpopular Mondays and Fridays.
UBS’s move to balance out office working across the week is understood to be a move to better manage its office space. Deutsche Bank gave the same reasoning last year, with CEO Christian Sewing saying the motivation was to “spread our presence more evenly across the week.”
The latest policy introduced by UBS remains much more liberal than the group’s competitors in the banking sector, most notably JPMorgan. The group mandated a full RTO mandate that began in March. Already, though, staff have complained about inadequate space, poor Wi-Fi, and unwell co-workers.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
Facebook ramps up TikTok battle by letting creators monetize their Stories

- Facebook has announced a new monetization program for creators. Facebook Content Monetization is meant to lure creators from TikTok as the company looks to build out its flagship social media property.
With the threat of a TikTok ban fading for now, Facebook is ramping up efforts to get creators to post their work on its platform.
The company has announced a new monetization program that will let creators make money simply by sharing photos and videos on the Facebook site. (Instagram has its own monetization program.)
Applications are being accepted at this website for the program’s beta. And at least one member of that beta program claims to have made $5,000 so far posting videos he would have normally posted without financial incentives.
Facebook has already sent invitations to one million creators to join the beta program, but is looking to expand it. Earnings will be based on engagement, total views, and plays. Public videos, reels, photos, and text posts are eligible to earn money.
Facebook has, for months, been trying to win the attention of creators. While Instagram has a healthy creator community, Meta’s flagship property has had trouble attracting them. In January, the company offered a $5,000 bonus to creators with an existing presence on other social platforms. TikTok remains the most popular destination for creators, but the lingering threat of that platform disappearing has made several of them diversify their outlets.
Over the course of the next year, the new Facebook Content Monetization program will replace Ads on Reels, In-Stream Ads and the Performance bonus programs. As part of the change, the company is streamlining its dashboard for creators to make it easier to see how their monetization efforts are going.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
Late rally not enough to save Wall Street from a fourth straight week of losing, the worst streak since an obscure Japanese trade sparked a global market meltdown

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are bouncing back Friday, but not by enough to keep Wall Street from heading toward a fourth straight losing week, which would be its longest such streak since August.
The S&P 500 was 1% higher in morning trading, a day after closing more than 10% below its record for its first “ correction ” since 2023. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 241 points, or 0.6%, as of 10:20 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% higher.
One piece of uncertainty hanging over Wall Street may be clearing after the Senate made moves to prevent a possible partial shutdown of the U.S. government. A deadline is looming at midnight for it.
Past shutdowns have not been a huge deal for financial markets, with investors pointing to how U.S. economic growth recovered after funding was restored. But any clearing of uncertainty can be helpful when so much of it has been sending the U.S. stock market on big, scary swings not just day to day but also hour to hour.
The heaviest uncertainty lies with President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war. There, the question is how much pain Trump will let the economy endure through tariffs and other policies in order to reshape the country and world as he wants. The president has said he wants manufacturing jobs back in the United States, along with a smaller U.S. government workforce and other fundamental changes.
U.S. households and businesses have already reported drops in confidence because of uncertainty about which tariffs will stick from Trump’s barrage of on -again, off -again announcements. That’s raised fears about a pullback in spending that could sap energy from the economy.
Worries look to be only worsening among U.S. households, according to a preliminary survey released Friday by the University of Michigan. Its measure of consumer sentiment sank for a third straight month, mostly because of concerns about the future rather than complaints about the present. The job market and overall economy look relatively solid at the moment.
“Many consumers cited the high level of uncertainty around policy and other economic factors,” according to Joanne Hsu, direct of the survey, and “frequent gyrations in economic policies make it very difficult for consumers to plan for the future, regardless of one’s policy preferences.”
Consumers are bracing for higher inflation in the future, with expectations for the long term jumping to 3.9% from last month’s prediction of 3.5%. That’s the biggest month-over-month jump since 1993.
Such fears have Wall Street focused on whether companies are seeing the sour mood of consumers translating into real pain for their businesses.
Ulta Beauty jumped 8.7% after the beauty products retailer reported stronger profit for the latest quarter. The company’s forecasts for upcoming revenue and profit fell short of analysts’ targets, but Chief Financial Officer Paula Oyibo said it wanted to be cautious “as we navigate ongoing consumer uncertainty.” Analysts said the forecasts appeared better than feared.
Gains for Big Tech stocks and companies in the artificial-intelligence industry also helped support the market. Such stocks have been under the most pressure in the recent sell-off after critics said their prices shot too high in the frenzy around AI.
Nvidia rose 3.1% to trim its loss for 2025 so far to 11.2%.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
Stocks jumped 2.1% in Hong Kong and 1.8% in Shanghai after China’s National Financial Regulatory Administration issued a notice ordering financial institutions to help develop consumer finance and encourage use of credit cards, do more to aid borrowers who run into trouble, and be more transparent in their lending practices.
Economists say China needs consumers to spend more to get the economy out of its doldrums, although most have advocated broader, more fundamental reforms such as increasing wages, social welfare and support for public health and education.
In the bond market, Treasury yields rose to recover some of their sharp recent losses. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.29% from 4.27% late Thursday and from 4.16% at the start of last week.
Yields have been swinging since January, when they were approaching 4.80%. When worries worsen about the U.S. economy’s strength, yields have fallen. When those worries lessen, or when concerns about inflation rise, yields have climbed.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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