Saturday, April 10, 2021Sha’aban 28, 1442 AH

BUSINESSGULF TIMES Boeing reveals

‘potential’ 737 MAX electrical issue

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China’s factory price surge deepens global infl ation worries

INDEX RISES 4.4% IN MARCH: Page 2

Remote hearings key to solving disputes during pandemic,says QICCA offi cialBy Peter AlagosBusiness Reporter

Advancements in technol-ogy have helped the ar-bitration industry adapt

to the challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, thus prov-ing the eff ectiveness of remote hearings in resolving various types of disputes, an offi cial of the Qatar International Centre for Conciliation and Arbitration (QICCA) said.

According to Dr Minas Khatchadourian, general coun-sel of QICCA, the Covid-19 pandemic “has had an unprec-edented impact on the arbitral process.” At the start of the pan-demic, Khatchadourian noted that several hearings were post-poned due to travel restrictions and social distancing measures implemented by the government to curb the spread of the virus.

“Nevertheless, illustrating the adaptability and fl exibility of arbitration, several tribunals and arbitral institutions quickly adapted by ordering remote hearings,” Khatchadourian told Gulf Times.

He said QICCA organised hearings that were conducted virtually through videoconfer-ence with participants “in one or more geographical places.”

“The reality is that remote hearings can work, and we have seen several successful exam-ples of this. The technology used to facilitate remote hear-ings is now well-established, with signifi cant improvements made in terms of functionality to better suit the needs of re-mote hearings,” Khatchadourian explained.

According to Khatchadourian, arbitral tribunals will need to con-sider a number of factors when deciding on whether to hold re-mote or in-person hearings.

These factors include the na-

ture of the evidence and whether an in-person hearing would as-sist with the resolution of the dispute, the size and complex-ity of the dispute, technological considerations, time zone con-siderations, and any justifi able concerns regarding witness tam-pering, Khatchadourian noted.

“Meanwhile, many arbitration institutions, if not all, recorded a growth in caseload last year, demonstrating that recourse to institutional arbitration is be-ing preferred. This means that one institution’s gain or success is not necessarily another’s loss.

“A healthy competition be-tween the arbitration institu-tions is necessary for continu-ous improvement, but it could also be wise to co-operate in some circumstances. A combi-nation of both may develop the best conditions for international institutional arbitration to excel as a legitimate means for dispute resolution,” Khatchadourian stressed.

QICCA board member for International Relations Sheikh Dr Thani bin Ali al-Thani also underscored the advantages of conducting remote hearings,

saying technology helped the centre work on diff erent cases last year.

In 2020, Sheikh Thani said QICCA received 27 requests for arbitration cases and two re-quests for conciliation cases, and settled commercial disputes worth QR425mn.

Sheikh Thani said the cases were related to diff erent types of contracts in sectors, such as construction, commercial agency, insurance, communica-tions, engineering, real estate brokerage, sales and supply, and fi nancing.

QSE tops 10,500 level on bullish outlook of retail investors, Gulf institutionsBy Santhosh V PerumalBusiness Reporter

The bullish outlook of local and foreign retail investors, as well as Gulf institutions, helped instil confidence in the Qatar Stock Exchange, which surpassed the 10,500 levels this week.The Islamic equities were seen outperforming the market this week which saw Al Faleh Educational Holding’s entry into the venture market from April 13.The industrials, real estate and telecom counters witnessed higher than average demand this week which saw QSE chief executive Rashid bin Ali al-Mansoori highlight the “pivotal” role of Qatar Development Bank in supporting the venture market.The weakened net selling pressure of the Gulf and Arab individuals as well as the domestic institutions also had role in sustaining the positive sentiments this week, which saw an international

credit rating agency Capital Intelligence aff irm the short term and long term foreign currency rating of the Qatar Islamic Bank with “stable” outlook.A half of the traded constituents extended gains this week, which saw Nebras Power, a joint venture of Qatar Electricity and Water Company, expand into Ukrainian markets by acquiring

six solar projects and entering into a partnership agreement with UDP Renewables (UDPR) and their parent holding company UFuture.Nevertheless, the foreign institutions’ net buying substantially declined this week, which saw the container and cargo throughput via Hamad, Doha and Al Ruwais ports record strong growth in the first quarter (Q1) of this year.The Arab institutions were seen bearish, albeit at lower levels, this week which

saw Qatar’s automobile sector witness robust expansion particularly in heavy equipment in Q1 2021.Amidst the overall bullish momentum, the insurance, transport and banking counters witnessed net profit booking this week which saw a total of 195,489 Masraf Al Rayan-sponsored exchange traded fund QATR valued at QR486,006 change hands across 36 transactions.Market capitalisation saw about QR8bn or 1.29% increase to QR616.02bn, mainly on small cap segments this week which saw a total of 70,859 Doha Bank-sponsored QETF valued at QR743,378 traded across 13 deals.The industrials index soared 3.09%, realty (2.27%), telecom (1.39%) and consumer goods and services (0.97%); whereas insurance declined 0.44%, transport (0.33%) and banks and financial services (0.19%) this week.Major gainers included Investment Holding Group, Qamco, Salam

International Investment, Ezdan and Qatari Investors Group; while Zad Holding, Qatar Islamic Insurance, Inma Holding, Qatari German Medical Devices and Al Khaleej Takaful were

among the losers this week. The local retail investors turned net buyers to the tune of QR16.42mn against net sellers of QR171.76mn a week ago.The Gulf institutions were net buyers to

the extent of QR9.66mn compared with net sellers of QR41.39mn the previous week. The foreign individuals were net buyers to the tune of QR1.29mn against net sellers of QR3.22mn the week ended April 1.The domestic funds’ net selling declined considerably to QR22.86mn compared to QR48.08mn a week ago.The Gulf individuals’ net selling eased markedly to QR42.19mn against QR58.74mn the previous week.The Arab individuals’ net selling shrank notably to QR0.64mn compared to QR20.82mn the week ended April 1.However, foreign funds’ net buying weakened significantly to QR38.97mn against QR343.76mn a week ago.The Arab funds were net profit takers to the extent of QR0.42mn compared with net buyers of QR0.02mn the previous week. Total trade volume declined more than 10% to 2.23mn shares, while value more than doubled to QR3.22bn despite 2% lower transactions at 53,427 this week.

Amidst the overall bullish momentum, the insurance, transport and banking counters at the QSE witnessed net profi t booking this week

WEEKLY REVIEW

German firms unveil lavish post-blastBeirut port planAFPBeirut

A German delegation yesterday unveiled a spectacular multi-billion-dollar project to rebuild Beirut port and its surroundings but admitted it was contingent on far-reaching reforms.Swathes of the port and adjacent neighbourhoods were destroyed when fire ignited poorly stored ammonium nitrate on August 4, causing one of the world’s largest ever non-nuclear explo-sions and killing more than 200 people.The plan put forward by two German firms envisions moving most port activity away from the city centre and re-urbanising the most damaged areas.Speaking at a press conference in Beirut, Colliers Germany man-aging director Hermann Schnell listed “aff ordable housing for families, green space and good infrastructure” among other features.The project envisions beaches and a “central park” alongside

restored architectural heritage, all wrapped in a plan that would generate 50,000 jobs and bil-lions in profit.The German pitch saw an “opportunity for a new city”, mapped out in a presentation that featured what it said were successful examples of rede-veloped ports in cities like Cape Town, Bilbao and Vienna.Lars Greiner of Hamburg Port Consulting (HPC) said the concept would “develop the port precinct of Beirut into a world class, state-of-the-art port” that would be more automated, cost-eff icient and ready for regional trade growth.The private initiative is the first large-scale, comprehensive plan after last year’s blast and has the support of Germany, whose ambassador attended the press conference.Other international players are also working on alternative or complementary proposals.French shipping giant CMA CGM, which leads container opera-tions in Lebanon, submitted its own master plan in September.

QICCA board member for International Relations, Sheikh Dr Thani bin Ali al-Thani, and (right) QICCA general counsel Dr Minas Khatchadourian. PICTURES: Jayan Orma

Turkey’s rising inflation outlook maintains need for tight policy

ReutersIstanbul

Expectations for Turkish inflation ticked higher in a closely watched survey published yesterday, putting pressure on the central bank’s new chief to maintain tight policy after his surprise appoint-ment sparked a lira selloff .In the central bank (TCMB) survey, the forecast for end-2021 annual consumer price inflation rose to 13.12% from 11.54% a month ago.The Turkish lira is also expected to weaken further against US dollar at the end of the year.Inflation climbed above 16% in March, its highest since mid-

2019, well above a 5% off icial target, signifying the need to maintain highest policy rate in any big economy.Under the former governor, Naci Agbal, the central bank has already lifted the policy rate from 10.25% to 19%. But he was removed on March 20 — after only about five months on the job and two days after a last rate hike.The central bank is expected to hold interest rates at 19% at its monthly rate-setting meeting on April 15, according to a Reuters Poll.However, the new governor is seen to begin easing monetary policy earlier than previously thought.

BUSINESS

Gulf Times Saturday, April 10, 20212

Big brands join $1bn forest conservation push for SE AsiaThomson Reuters FoundationKuala Lumpur

Major household brands and palm-oil buyers Nestle and PepsiCo have backed a scheme that aims to invest $1bn in forest conservation across Southeast Asia over 25 years.The Rimba Collective, developed by Lestari Capital, a Singapore-based impact investment firm, will fund projects that protect and restore more than 500,000 hectares (1.2mn acres) of tropical forests in Indonesia and the region.“By linking conservation funding directly with company operations, it has the potential to be a game-changer for forest protection and restoration,” Michal Zrust, Lestari Capital co-founder, told a virtual launch event this week.The initiative will complement

eff orts by other groups to build more sustainable palm-oil supply chains, he added.In 2020, tropical forest losses around the world equalled the size of the Netherlands, according to monitoring service Global Forest Watch.Green groups blame production of commodities like palm oil and minerals for much of the destruction of forests, as they are cleared for plantations, ranches, farms and mines.Cutting down forests has major implications for global goals to curb climate change, as trees absorb about a third of the planet-warming emissions produced worldwide, but release carbon back into the air when they rot or are burned.Forests also provide food and livelihoods, and are an essential habitat for wildlife. Indonesia is home to the world’s third-largest tropical forests but

is also its biggest producer of palm oil, an edible oil used in everything from margarine to soap and fuel.Many big buyers of palm oil, besides purchasing certified sustainable oil, have invested in technologies to monitor their supply chains and help stop deforestation, but with limited success so far.The Rimba Collective will have an initial focus on projects in Indonesia and aims to be the largest business-led conservation initiative in the region.Its founding partners are consumer goods companies Nestle, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and Singapore-based agribusiness Wilmar International.They will contribute funding managed by Lestari Capital for a portfolio of forest conservation projects in Southeast Asia.It is hoped more investors, such as

commodity traders, palm oil processors and growers, consumer goods firms and manufacturers, will join the scheme before the first payments are made in December.Projects will be selected based on their potential to protect and restore large areas of natural ecosystems and critical habitats such as rainforest, peatland and mangroves.Other priorities are to generate measurable ecosystem benefits — including carbon sequestration, water purification and soil health — and decent livelihoods for local communities.Benjamin Ware, global head of sustainable sourcing and climate delivery at Nestle, said the firm’s involvement would “enable us to speed up our proactive eff orts to protect forests and peatlands as well as human rights”, beyond its supply chain.

Last year, well-known brands launched a fresh push to stop commodity supply chains fuelling forest loss.It was met with scepticism by many green groups after the same set of companies failed to meet a 2020 target to purchase only sustainably produced commodities.Environmentalists urged firms in the Rimba Collective to ensure their entire supply chains are not linked to deforestation and to transparently report on progress.Grant Rosoman, senior adviser at Greenpeace International, said more finance for forest conservation, especially led by communities, was desperately needed.He welcomed the long-term nature of the new scheme and the fact that its results will be verified independently.But transparency around how it works, including its costs, payments and the

organisation running it, are crucial, he added. “We are also concerned that with carbon sequestration as one of the stated benefits, carbon credits may be claimed and sold to climate polluters,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.Marcus Colchester, a senior policy advisor at the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme, called the Rimba project “innovative” and urged Indonesia to help by simplifying its onerous process for recognising customary land rights.Kevin Woods, a senior policy analyst at Washington-based nonprofit Forest Trends, said studies showed results are poor when forest conservation does not support those rights.“This can be best achieved by funds going through local organisations that work closely with forest-based communities on...conservation,” he said.

Hong Kong defends plan to reduce corporate database transparencyAFPHong Kong

A Hong Kong offi cial on Friday defended plans to curb public access

to company searches, a move transparency, media and some business advocates have warned will hamper the exposure of shady corporate dealings.

The semi-autonomous fi -nancial hub currently main-tains a paywalled Companies Registry listing the registered owners of businesses.

The database has been used by journalists, academics and activist shareholders to unravel global money trails, including wealth amassed by the families of senior Chinese leaders.

The new proposal will mask the home addresses and iden-tifi cation card numbers of owners and directors, limit-ing the information to corre-spondence addresses.

Hong Kong’s government says the change is needed to protect privacy.

“Agencies and offi cers who work against money launder-ing will still be able to get the information,” Christopher Hui, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Fi-nancial Services and the Treas-ury, told lawmakers on Friday.

“The change is absolutely not a regression, but a devel-opment as people attach more importance to privacy,” he added.

The government says stronger protections are need-ed to counter doxxing — the publishing of private data on the Internet.

The tactic was used by both sides of the ideological divide during 2019’s huge and often violent pro-democracy pro-tests.

But transparency activists have reacted with alarm.

“The companies registry is an important tool long used

by journalists to improve ac-countability, expose wrong-doing, and bring to light im-portant matters of public concern,” Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club said in a recent statement.

David Webb, a Hong Kong-based activist investor, said allowing directors to obscure their identities “reduces the ability of researchers and jour-nalists to shine a light in shady places.”

“The proposed law will fa-cilitate corruption, fraud and other crimes, and make it eas-ier for directors to hide from creditors,” he told Bloomberg News.

On Thursday, Bloomberg re-ported that the International Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong had urged the govern-ment to reconsider the propos-al, saying it was being pushed through too quickly and would hurt the city’s business hub reputation.

Hong Kong’s govern-ment made a similar attempt to change the Companies Registry in 2013 but it was shelved after a backlash, including from within the financial industry, where some acknowledged the benefits of keeping public access to the data.

Media exposes made possi-ble by company searches since then have included helping to uncover ships that violated North Korea sanctions, alleged sanctions-busting deals with Iran by China’s telecoms gi-ant Huawei as well as compa-nies and properties owned by the families of senior Chinese leaders.

The latest planned change comes as Beijing cracks down on dissent in Hong Kong.

The city’s legislature has been scrubbed of opposition and the government is unlikely to face resistance to its planned changes.

China’s factory price surge deepens global infl ation worriesBloombergBeijing

China’s producer prices climbed in March by the most since July 2018 on surging commodity costs, add-

ing to worries over rising global infl ation as the pandemic recedes.

The producer price index rose 4.4% from a year earlier after gaining 1.7% in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday, higher than the 3.6% median esti-mate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The consumer price index increased 0.4% after falling for two straight months.

After months of defl ation, producer prices have started to pick up sharply this year as the cost of oil, copper and agricul-tural goods rallies.

As the world’s biggest exporter, China’s rising prices threaten to stoke infl ation around the world, adding to volatility in fi nancial markets.

Infl ation risks already are mounting be-cause of a stronger recovery in the world economy, massive fi scal stimulus in the US and soaring shipping costs.

“Our research has found that China’s PPI has a high positive correlation with CPI in the US,” said Raymond Yeung, chief economist for Greater China at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. “The higher-than-expected PPI data could impact people’s judgment of infl a-tion pressure in the US and globally, and this impact shouldn’t be underestimated.”

The CSI 300 Index was down 1.5% in Shanghai yesterday. Copper futures in Shanghai inched lower, while construc-tion steel also dropped.

“Beneath the upswing in China’s in-fl ation in March was a telling divergence — prices tied to commodities were major drivers, while those linked to household demand were relatively stable.

There are two implications — industrial fi rms stand to gain from higher factor-

gate prices, and consumers aren’t quite back on their feet”, says David Qu, econo-mist at Bloomberg. Surging commodity prices have gained the attention of Chi-na’s top policy makers, with the Financial Stability and Development Committee — chaired by Vice Premier Liu He — calling this week for eff orts to stabilise prices.

Authorities should “keep a close eye on commodities prices,” the committee said in a statement on Thursday evening.

The infl ation data show consumption remains subdued, giving the central bank reason not to tighten monetary policy anytime soon, according to ANZ’s Yeung.

“If infl ation pressure starts to manifest

in consumer prices, policy could begin to tighten,” he said. Consumer-price defl ation in recent months was driven mainly by falling pork prices, a key component of China’s CPI basket. While prices are likely to pick up, the slow recovery in household spending means infl ation will likely remain subdued.

Core consumer prices, which exclude volatile energy and food costs, rose 0.3% in March from a year earlier, while food prices fell 0.7%.

“The recovery of manufacturing indus-try is fast, but the speed of the consump-tion rebound is less than ideal,” said Zhou Hao, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank AG in Singapore. “The

recovery of the services sector is not ideal either, but manufacturing is exceptionally good, meaning that manufacturing will continue to drive economic growth going forward, while services will be a drag.”

PPI increases could reach more than 7% in the next two to three months, he added.

For Chinese businesses, rising factory prices mean higher profi ts and more ca-pacity to repay debt, with industrial prof-its jumping in the fi rst two months of the year from the same period in 2020, recent data showed. However, purchase prices for industrial companies rose even faster in March than the price of fi nished goods, which could squeeze profi ts if it continues.

China is paying a high price for its ban on Australian coalBy Clyde Russell

China is paying a high price for its unof-ficial ban on coal imports from Australia, with the cost of domestic and alternative foreign supplies rising for both thermal and coking grades of the fuel.

China, the world’s biggest importer, producer and consumer of coal, has eff ectively ended imports from Australia, the biggest shipper of coking coal used to make steel and number two in thermal coal used to produce electricity, as part of an ongoing political dispute between the two nations.

The restrictions on imports from Aus-tralia came into eff ect in the second half of last year, resulting in China’s imports dropping to virtually zero in the first two months of this year from a 2020 high of 9.46mn tonnes in June, according to Ref-initiv vessel-tracking and port data.

However, China’s consumers of imported coal have been facing higher costs, with prices for alternatives to supplies from Australia, both local and foreign, rising as the market adjusts to the unoff icial ban.

In coking coal, the price of free-on-board Australian cargoes has been weak-ening since the ban was imposed, apart from the usual seasonal gain for the north-

ern hemisphere winter. The Singapore Exchange contract for Australian coking coal ended at $113.71 a tonne on Thursday, down 18.8% from the $140 that it reached at the start of October, just as the Chinese ban was coming into eff ect.

If a Chinese importer switched from Australian cargoes to those from the

United States, the price diff erence has entirely reversed since the ban started to aff ect flows.

Coking coal free-on-board at the US east coast port of Hampton Roads, as assessed by commodity price reporting agency Argus, has surged to $152.75 on Thursday from $114 a tonne at the start

of October last year, a gain of 34%. This means that US coking coal is currently about $39 a tonne more expensive that supplies from Australia, and this doesn’t account for the higher shipping costs given the longer distance from the US east coast to China.

China’s domestic coking coal price has

also been gaining since the restrictions on imports from Australia, with Dalian Commodity Exchange futures rising 16% from 1,353 yuan ($206.56) a tonne at the start of October to end at 1,573 yuan on Thursday. This price isn’t directly comparable to the free-on-board prices in Australia and the United States, as it includes freight and other costs as well as import taxes and duties.

However, it does show that Chinese domestic prices have been pushed higher, partially reflecting the higher cost of im-ports from sources other than Australia.

China’s neighbour Mongolia has become its biggest supplier of coking coal, meeting 61.7% of imports in the first two months of this year, up from just 17.7% in the same period in 2020, according to off icial data.

Australia’s share of imports came down to zero from 68.4% in January-February 2020, according to the data, while the United States boosted its share to 9.1% from under 2%, and Canada went to 12.1% from 6.1%.

While coking coal supplies from Mongo-lia are cheaper than those from seaborne alternatives, it’s believed that they tend to track Chinese domestic prices, meaning it’s likely that they have risen sharply as well, especially once transportation and washing costs are factored in.

For thermal coal, the main impact from the ban of Australian cargoes ap-pears to have been strength in Chinese domestic prices, with benchmark coal at Qinhuangdao, as assessed by SteelHome, closing at 747 yuan a tonne on Thursday, equivalent to about $114.

While this is down from the winter peak of 1,038 yuan a tonne, it’s still 22% higher than the 612 yuan that prevailed at the start of October.

It’s also believed that the Chinese authorities prefer a domestic thermal coal price in a range between 530 to 580 yuan a tonne, a level said to secure the profit-ability of mines while keeping electricity prices competitive.

China has turned to Indonesia, the world’s top exporter of thermal coal, to plug some of the gap caused by the absence of Australian cargoes, as well as buying more from Russia and South Africa, two countries that can off er similar quality coal to Australia.

But boosting supplies from these coun-tries appears to have done little to lower domestic prices, meaning Chinese users are still paying substantially more for the fuel than what they were prior to the ban of Australian coal.

Clyde Russell is Reuters analyst. The views expressed are his own.

Shipping containers next to gantry cranes at the Yangshan Deepwater Port in Shanghai. China’s producer prices climbed in March by the most since July 2018 on surging commodity costs, adding to worries over rising global inflation as the pandemic recedes.

BUSINESS3Gulf Times

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Most Asia bourses end lower, but optimism remainsAFPHong Kong

Most Asian markets retreated on Friday as traders took their foot off the pedal ahead of a much-anticipated earnings season, while an increasingly confident mood on trading floors has analysts predicting the global equities rally still has legs.

While some countries are having trouble with their vaccine programmes and a pick-up in in-fections, there is a general feeling that governments will get a better hold on the crisis and allow econo-mies to reopen, even if a little later than previously hoped.

Wall Street provided another strong lead, with the S&P 500 chalking up a second successive record and the Nasdaq piling on more than 1% as tech shares re-gained their mojo, having suff ered recent selling.

Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell again repeated his mantra that the bank would stand fast in its pledge to keep borrowing costs at record lows for as long as needed to support recovery in the world’s top economy.

While last week’s blockbuster jobs report was welcome, he said the “recovery remains uneven and incomplete” and he wanted to see more of those before he was happy progress was being made.

Analysts said an unexpected rise in jobless claims last week backed up Powell’s stance.

There remains a concern that the forecast strong recovery, the reopening of the economy, Presi-dent Joe Biden’s vast spending sprees, and the rollout of vaccines will fan inflation to a point that the Fed will be forced to lift rates earlier than it intends.

Yields on benchmark 10-year Treasuries — a gauge of future rates — edged down as Powell spoke, though they remained around a one-year high.

Data on Friday showed Chinese producer prices rose at their fast-est pace in more than two years owing to a jump in the cost of commodities.

That has led to concerns the increases will filter through to the

world economy from the export giant, putting pressure on central banks as they try to keep borrow-ing costs down.

Axi strategist Stephen Innes said the figures “might add a rip-ple or two of angst to the inflation pacifist calm that has fallen on the market”. Still, he added: “Make no mistake this is a global equity mar-ket that is turning exceptionally comfortable with growth driving up yields supported by a Fed that is in absolutely no hurry to tap the brakes.

“The question is, does it get better than this, or are we nearing peak optimism? Or will US stocks remain in ‘kids in a candy store mode’ while gliding on a sugar rush tailwind from a once-in-a-generation type stimulus eff ect?”

Hong Kong and Shanghai dropped as traders kept tabs on China-US relations after Washington restricted trade with top Chinese supercomputing centres on security grounds, while lawmakers unveiled legislation to solidify ties with Taiwan and pres-sure Beijing over alleged theft of intellectual property.

Sydney, Seoul, Mumbai, Singapore, Taipei and Wellington were also lower, though there were gains in Tokyo, Bangkok and Jakarta.

London and Frankfurt dipped in early trade, while Paris was flat.

But Xi Qiao at UBS Global Wealth Management said there would likely be more gains in the pipeline.

“A lot of investors are worried about the stock market highs, but that doesn’t mean it can’t get higher, and the economic condi-tions are certainly set up for a positive equity environment,” she told Bloomberg TV.

Eyes are now turning to the release of corporate results for January-March, with expectations high that companies are seeing the benefits of the recovery and are hopeful for the outlook.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 closed up 0.2% to 29,768.06 points; Hong Kong — Hang Seng Index ended down 1.1% to 28,698.80 points and Shanghai — Composite closed down 0.9% to 3,450.68 points yesterday.

Top India bank drags its feet on billionaire Adani coal loanBloombergMumbai

India’s largest bank hasn’t decided whether to help finance an Australian coal mine following mounting pressure from climate activists and investors, including BlackRock Inc.Two senior State Bank of India executives, who asked not to be identified, said the bank was dragging its feet on extending part of a funding line of as much as $1bn to Adani Enterprises Ltd, which plans to use the money for the controversial Carmichael mine. The bank’s executive committee, which will make the final decision, hasn’t had discussions about the loan this year, the officials said.The Carmichael mine has been the focus of environmental protests since it was proposed in 2010. SBI shareholders have joined the opposition. BlackRock and Norway’s Storebrand ASA raised their objections over the past year, and Amundi SA divested its holdings of SBI’s green bonds because of the bank’s ties to the Carmichael mine.SBI Chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara, who took charge in October, is reticent to disburse the funds to Adani given the opposition to the Australian project, bank officials said. Still, no decision has yet been made about the loan, they said. SBI’s shares were up 0.6% in Mumbai on Friday, the third-best performer among peers in a gauge of 10 lenders that was down 0.5%. Adani Enterprises was up 2.4%.Adani said in a statement that construction of the Carmichael Mine is “well underway and we are on track to export” coal in 2021. The company added that its mine and rail projects

are fully funded. Spokespeople for SBI haven’t responded to e-mails seeking comment.The Adani loan has left SBI, which is majority-owned by the Indian government, in a bind. While foreign investors are increasingly restricting support to companies involved in extracting or consuming coal, since it’s the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, 70% of India’s electricity comes from coal plants. The bank has to balance its clean-energy lending policy with the power supply needs of the country, the SBI executives said.The Carmichael mine is located in the Galilee Basin in the northeastern Queensland province. The mine’s licence was off icially approved by the Queensland government in 2019 and if fully developed, the mine could contribute to an eventual doubling of Australia’s coal exports. While that may provide a fresh boon for the country’s economy, it would be detrimental to eff orts to limit global warming and follows a year when Australia suff ered record temperatures and widespread wildfires. SBI drafted an in-principle agreement with Adani in 2014 for a $1bn facility and brought in several banks from across the world to provide the funding as part of a consortium. The plan has had several iterations since then as the project became more politically controversial. The memorandum of understanding between SBI and Adani for disbursing the loan included several covenants covering environmental clearance, viability of the project and timelines.While environmental clearance was granted by the Queensland government, the disbursal is subject to meeting other conditions including funding visibility from other lenders, the two officials said.

Emerging currencies and stocks retreat as dollar bounces backReutersLondon

Emerging-market curren-cies retreated on Friday after the dollar bounced

back from two-week lows, but were set to rise for the week with the Polish zloty mark-ing large gains after the central bank held lending rates.

Russia’s rouble and the South African rand led losses across currencies in Europe, the Mid-dle East and Africa (EMEA), while the MSCI’s index of emerging-market currencies fell 0.2%.

But the index was set to add about 0.2% for the week, ben-efi ting from recent weakness in the dollar and US Treasury yields.

While the dollar rose from two-week lows on Friday, it was still set for its worst week this year, following dovish com-ments from the Federal Reserve.

“The Fed has been trying for a long time to dampen expecta-tion of an imminent normalisa-tion of monetary policy. Against this backdrop economic data coming in below expectations can put a dampener on the dol-

lar. That means the dollar has not been able to turn the tables in its favour,” analysts at Com-merzbank wrote in a note.

Following this sentiment, US yields had retreated through the week, while emerging-market debt saw strong infl ows.

High-yielding currencies such as the rand also marked strong gains for the week.

Central European currencies were all set for weekly gains, with the Polish zloty rising the most against the dollar and the euro after the Polish central

bank held interest rates earlier in the week.

The zloty was set to be the best-performing EMEA cur-rency for the week, adding about 2% to the dollar and 0.8% to the euro.

Recent weakness in the dollar and US yields came as a source of relief for emerging market assets, which are largely trading down for the year amid pressure from an increase in US lending rates.

Bucking the trend, Rus-sia’s rouble was set for a fourth straight weekly loss, its worst losing streak since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last year. Recent losses in the currency were driven by concerns over a possible military confl ict be-tween Russia and Ukraine, as well as Western criticism of Moscow’s treatment of prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Turkey’s lira was muted for the week, with investors re-maining wary over the coun-try’s fi nancial credibility after major shifts in central bank governance over the past two years.

Emerging-market stocks fell for the day, and were set for mild weekly losses.

An external view of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Hang Seng Index closed down 1.1% to 28,698.80 points yesterday.

Toshiba board urges caution over CVC Capital off erBloombergTokyo

Toshiba Corp’s board issued an unusual statement on Friday in the wake of CVC Capital Part-

ners’s offer to take the Japanese con-glomerate private, cautioning the pro-posal is preliminary and may not lead to a transaction. Shares tumbled.

CVC’s offer is not legally binding and many details still need to be worked out, said Osamu Nagayama, chairper-son of the board. Any deal also requires extensive regulatory reviews and CVC would have to organise a consortium to line up financing.

“We expect that such fi nancing proc-ess would require a substantial amount of time and involve complexity for con-sideration,” said Nagayama. Directors

will conduct a “careful review of the ini-tial proposal when it is further clarifi ed in the future.” Toshiba’s shares slid 5.4% in Friday trading.

The board also said the CVC proposal was “completely unsolicited and not initiated by Toshiba.”

The company disclosed this week that CVC made an offer to buy out its public shareholders. The preliminary proposal is for ¥5,000 a share or about ¥2.28tn ($20.7bn), Bloomberg News re-ported.

An acquisition by a foreign buyer may prove difficult because the compa-ny has been considered an icon of Japan and several of its businesses have deep strategic importance for the country.

Its nuclear unit, for example, is involved in decommissioning the wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. Toshiba is also the larg-

est shareholder in memory-chip maker Kioxia Holdings Corp. Given the sensi-tivity around Toshiba’s business, gov-ernment approval would be required for the deal, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato.

Separately, Toshiba this week reap-pointed Satoshi Tsunakawa, currently chairman of the company, as an execu-tive officer to have him deal with its largest shareholder Effissimo Capital Management, according to people fa-miliar with the matter.

The board approved the decision during a meeting on Wednesday, said the people, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.

The move will give Tsunakawa a more central role as the tech icon navigates the flurry of deal negotiations.

Tsunakawa became the conglomer-ate’s president in June 2016 and led the

company’s effort to restructure after its large-scale accounting scandal before he passed the baton to Nobuaki Kuru-matani in 2018. Tsunakawa had stepped down as a representative executive of-ficer last year.

Singapore-based fund Effissimo has been increasing its pressure on Toshiba in recent months, including forcing the company to hold an extraordinary gen-eral meeting of shareholders in March. At that event, Toshiba shareholders approved the firm’s request for an in-dependent investigation into director appointments at the annual sharehold-ers’ meeting last year – despite Toshiba management opposition.

That vote was considered a blow to Kurumatani. Effissimo has hired law-yers to investigate those appointments.

A Toshiba spokeswoman declined to comment on the board’s move.

Singapore’s biggest bank to reduce offi ce space in home marketBloombergSingapore

DBS Group Holdings Ltd is poised to trim offi ce space in Singapore, the

latest bank to pare its footprint in the city-state during the coronavirus pandemic.

Southeast Asia’s largest bank plans to surrender about two and half fl oors, or 75,000 square feet, in Tower 3 of the Marina Bay Fi-nancial Centre, according to peo-ple with knowledge of the matter.

The lender occupies more than a dozen fl oors in the build-ing, located in the central busi-ness district near the iconic Ma-rina Bay Sands hotel and casino.

DBS is set to give up the fl oors in December, the people said, asking not to be identifi ed be-cause the plans are private. A representative for the company declined to comment.

The move comes on top of the lender’s plans to cut space in the pricey Hong Kong market. Banks around the world are re-thinking their use of offi ces af-ter the health crisis showed that they can still operate eff ectively with many employees at home. HSBC Holdings Plc is allow-ing more than 1,200 staff at its UK call centres to permanently work remotely.

In Singapore, DBS is follow-ing the footsteps of Citigroup Inc and Mizuho Financial Group

Inc. Citigroup is giving up three fl oors as it aims to better opti-mise its real estate, while Mi-zuho is cutting space equivalent to less than one fl oor on the back of work from home success.

DBS is the anchor tenant at MBFC Tower 3, which is part of a three-tower complex managed by Raffl es Quay Asset Manage-ment. Other tenants include Rio Tinto Plc. It’s the headquarters

for DBS, which also has space in Changi Business Park.

Singapore’s largest bank has been promoting work fl exibility while also espousing the ben-efi ts of offi ce life. In November, it said employees would be al-lowed to work remotely as much as 40% of the time. Chief Ex-ecutive Offi cer Piyush Gupta said last month that staff some-times need to be in the offi ce to

“build the soul of the company.” The downsizing by fi nancial fi rms may not necessarily be a huge setback for the Singapore offi ce market, given that tech behemoths are expanding their presence in the Southeast Asian hub. Amazon.com Inc is taking up the three fl oors that Citi-group is relinquishing, while ByteDance Ltd agreed to lease three fl oors in a building in the

fi nancial district. Singapore’s offi ce market has shown recent signs of a recovery.

The vacancy rate eased to 3.3% last quarter from 3.9% in the last three months of 2020, according to preliminary esti-mates by CBRE Research. The rebound was led by Grade A offi ce buildings, with rents for those properties remaining sta-ble in the quarter.

The DBS Group Holdings logo is displayed atop Tower 3 of the Marina Bay Financial Centre in Singapore. DBS Group is poised to trim off ice space in Singapore, the latest bank to pare its footprint in the city-state during the coronavirus pandemic.

BUSINESS

Gulf Times Saturday, April 10, 20214

China Huarong tries to revive investor confidence after routBloombergBeijing

China Huarong Asset Management Co is stepping up eff orts to revive investor confidence after persistent questions about the bad-debt manager’s financial health sent its dollar bonds tumbling to record lows. In an e-mailed response to questions from Bloomberg on Friday, the state-owned company said it has been making debt payments “on time” and its operations are “normal.” The comments came a day after people familiar with the matter said China Huarong has prepared a plan to boost profitability that would avoid the need for a debt restructuring or government recapitalisation.While prices for several of China Huarong’s bonds have bounced from their lows on Thursday, the securities continue to trade at historically depressed levels as investors look for more clarity on the company’s finances and overhaul plan.The selloff , which has spilled over to some of China Huarong’s peers, has become the latest test of investor faith in China’s state-owned borrowers after a record-breaking surge in defaults last year. “Too big to fail appears to be an outdated concept in China,” said Deng Hao, chief executive of Beijing GEC Asset Management.For a giant and complex entity like

China Huarong, it is risky to assume that default risk is low simply because the Ministry of Finance is the largest shareholder of the firm, he said.His firm does not hold Huarong’s bonds or shares.What’s the company: China Huarong is one of the four state-owned entities set up by China’s government in 1999 to help clean up a banking system riddled with bad debt.It listed in Hong Kong after a $2.5bn initial public off ering in 2015.The firm was left reeling in 2018 after former chairman Lai Xiaomin was accused of bribery and ultimately found guilty of receiving 1.79bn ($273mn) in illicit payments.Under his watch, China Huarong expanded into areas including securities trading, trusts and other investments, deviating from the original mandate of disposing bad debt.Lai was was sentenced to death in January and later executed.China Huarong has started trimming non-core assets amid regulatory pressure to return to its roots.Net income slumped 92% in the first half of 2020 from a year earlier as the value of some assets dropped in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.The company’s market value has tumbled to about $5bn from $15bn when it listed.What’s happening: Trading in China Huarong shares and structured

products was halted in Hong Kong on April 1, when the company said its 2020 financial results were delayed because its auditor needed more time to finalise a transaction.The bad-debt manager has submitted an overhaul plan to regulators and received positive initial feedback, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information.China Huarong is still determining the value of its stakes in some onshore and off shore units and finalising which ones will be sold, part of the reason it held off releasing 2020 results, the people said.The company is also awaiting final approvals from Chinese authorities.

While China Huarong’s debt recouped some losses after Bloomberg reported details of the overhaul plan on Thursday, yield spreads over comparable Treasuries on several dollar bonds were headed for record closing highs on Friday, a sign of persistent investor scepticism.The firm’s bond due 2030 is indicated at about 420 basis points, compared to 208 basis points at the end of last month, Bloomberg-compiled prices show.Some yuan bonds of Huarong Securities Co, a unit of China Huarong, also plunged to record lows in the onshore market this week, prompting the brokerage to put out a statement

reassuring investors that its business environment and operations have had no major changes recently.Why does it matter: China Huarong is deeply intertwined in the nation’s financial markets.A restructuring of the firm would be the most high-profile reorganisation of a Chinese state-owned financial institution in recent years.The failure to report annual earnings on time has fueled speculation that the company may have problems unknown to its investors.Uncertainty over China Huarong’s planned overhaul may raise refinancing risks for the firm and its subsidiaries.Investors are paying close attention to any signs of government intervention after Chinese off icials recently began dialing back financial support for some state-owned enterprises.SOEs defaulted on a record 81.5 bn yuan of domestic bonds last year, according to data compiled by Fitch Ratings, though most of these companies were aff iliated with local or regional governments.China Huarong’s biggest shareholder is the country’s Ministry of Finance.What does the company say: At a brief call held after the earnings delay was announced, China Huarong executives including Vice President Wang Wenjie told investors the firm was operating normally.They said it was inappropriate to

publish an unaudited financial report that could not accurately reflect its financial performance.Management also highlighted the bright prospects of the distressed-asset sector due to an expected rise in demand for dissolving financial risk, and flagged opportunities in areas such as corporate mergers and reorganization, bankruptcy restructuring and mezzanine investment.The company didn’t elaborate on its plans in its brief statement to Bloomberg on Friday.What do ratings companies say: Fitch Ratings maintained its A rating and stable outlook on China Huarong in its latest rating report published in June.The assessment “reflects the government’s ownership and very high level of control, which indicates close linkages between the company and its sponsor,” Fitch said.Moody’s Investors Service maintained its A3 rating in a credit opinion released in December.The assumption of a very high level of government support takes into consideration its ownership structure and strategic importance, Moody’s analysts said in the report.Fitch declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg via email, and a Moody’s analyst wasn’t immediately available to provide remarks.

Google-backed India startup Dunzo seeks $150mn fundingBloombergMumbai

Dunzo Digital Private Ltd, a delivery startup backed by Google and operating in eight

Indian cities, aims to double the amount of capital it has raised so far to extend its reach across the country and become a $1bn revenue business in the next two years.

The app, which connects low-cost couriers to thousands of individual merchants, has lured Indians with its rapid delivery of items ranging from groceries to parcels in traffic-clogged cities. The Bengaluru firm has so far raised about $140mn to date and aims to tap investors for roughly another $150mn in 2021.

“The expansion only really starts next year at full pace, so we’ll raise the capital this year, but it gets deployed only next year,” Kabeer Biswas, Dun-zo’s 36-year-old chief executive of-ficer, said in an interview.

The company may expand to two more cities in 2021, then build toward a presence in 20 urban areas by mid-2023, he said.

It’s also started offering 15-minute deliveries for a range of 2,000 com-monly-sought-after items.

Dunzo was founded in 2014 and started out as a WhatsApp service, before becoming an app where cus-tomers typically pay about $6 per order.

It’s tapping into growing Inter-net usage and accessibility in India, where tech and consumer startups are flourishing as the number of smartphone users nears 1 billion.

E-commerce has been the quick-est growing channel for fast-moving consumer good products in recent years, and now accounts for about 5% of all such sales, according to Jefferies.

Dunzo and other food delivery services have also seen Covid-19 drive competition as a second wave of infections sweeps India.

Competing firms riding that boom include food-delivery app Swiggy, which said Monday that it’s raising $800mn.

The growing imposition of state-level restrictions “is a negative de-velopment for consumption in gen-eral” but web-based retail will likely get a “boost,” Jefferies analysts, in-cluding Vivek Maheshwari, wrote in a report Tuesday.

Biswas said Dunzo doubled its an-nual sales in 2020 and expects the same rate of growth this year. Dun-zo’s biggest operation in Bengaluru is now breaking even, he said.

However, the company is burning up to $2.5mn a month, though Biswas expects Dunzo to become profitable in 24 to 30 months. It may also look to expand in other markets in Asia in 2023, he said.

“You make 20 cents an order – the only way to make this business work is at scale,” he said.

Still, “it’s important to be ex-tremely disciplined in your geo-graphical expansion, because you could suddenly start losing money everywhere.”

XP Asset to raise Brazil timberland fund of up to $360mnBloombergBrasilia

XP Inc, Brazil’s biggest broker-age, is preparing to raise as much as 2bn reais ($360mn) for

its fi rst timberland fund as low inter-est rates increase demand for alterna-tive investments.

Cleidson Rangel, a specialist in natural resources, joined XP’s fund-management unit to run a new op-eration focused on that sector, ac-cording to Bruno Castro, XP Asset Management’s chief executive offi cer. The fi rm also plans to create farmland and carbon-credit funds, Castro said.

“There are so many investment op-portunities in a nation the size of Bra-

zil,” Castro said in an interview. “And the return for those funds has no cor-relation with other markets, so they are a real diversifi cation alternative for local and foreign investors.”

Brazil’s fund industry posted almost 39bn reais in net infl ows in January and February, after raising 174bn reais in 2020, according to Anbima, the na-tion’s capital-markets association. Interest rates near record lows have persuaded many investors to seek out non-traditional assets to boost returns. Money has been pouring in even as the nation staggers through the Covid-19 pandemic with an infec-tion rate that’s among the highest in the world.

The timberland fund plans to start raising money in May or June, accord-

ing to Castro. Potential investors at fi rst will include pension funds, en-dowments, sovereign-wealth funds, insurance companies, family offi ces and private-banking fi rms, he said, adding that XP will also provide seed money.

The fi rm is also mulling a way to eventually let retail investors par-ticipate, according to Isaac Sutton, a partner at BH26, a boutique focused on natural resources in Brazil that is an exclusive XP adviser.

Foreign investors are permitted to buy a maximum of 49% of a plot of land in Brazil, so the XP fund will be a vehicle for them to invest without surpassing that threshold, said Ran-gel, who for almost 10 years was a director of Brazil investments at Han-

cock Natural Resource Group, a glo-bal investment manager. He also had stints at FourWinds Capital Manage-ment and Forest Systems, focusing on carbon credits and land investments.

The goal is to obtain environmental, social and governance certifi cations for all the products sold by the new natural-resources unit to attract the growing segment of ESG investors, Castro said.

Rangel said there’s a potential market of $50bn of timberland in-vestments in Brazil and $400bn in farmland. Only 8% of planted timber forests in Brazil are in the hands of in-vestors, and more pulp and paper pro-ducers are willing to sell, he said.

Iba, the nation’s timberland in-dustry association, estimates invest-

ments in the sector will total about 35.5bn reais from 2020 through 2023, doubling the amount for the previous four years combined.

The fund’s strategy will be to di-versify risks by purchasing mature forests with diff erent types of timber buyers, Sutton said. It will be denomi-nated in reais and aims to yield at least 7% above the rate of infl ation.

Returns will be generated by the in-crease in land values and gains from sales of timber and carbon credits, according to Sutton, a former head of proprietary investments at Grupo Safra SA, the Brazilian banking group.

XP Asset Management has 100bn reais in assets under management and aims to double that in two years, Castro said.

Credit Suisse is planning hedge fund unit overhaulBloomberg New York

Credit Suisse Group AG is plan-ning a sweeping overhaul of the hedge fund business at the

centre of the Archegos Capital blow up, as the drama forces Wall Street banks to reconsider how they fi nance some of their most lucrative clients.

The Swiss bank is weighing signifi -cant cuts to its prime brokerage arm in coming months, people familiar with the plan said.

The lender has already moved to tighten fi nancing terms with some funds, and hopes changes to the unit can allow it to forgo major cuts to oth-er parts of the investment bank, which just had a banner quarter, the people said, asking not to be identifi ed as the matter is private.

The implosion of Bill Hwang’s fam-ily offi ce — which has caused one of the costliest blows to Credit Suisse in its 165-year history — is the latest reckoning for banks chasing the lu-crative business of catering to hedge funds, which present the potential for both outsized gains and huge losses, magnifi ed by large borrowing.

Deutsche Bank AG sold its prime brokerage business to BNP Paribas SA in 2019 as part of a retreat from equities during the German bank’s overhaul.

Credit Suisse declined to comment.Prime-brokerage divisions cater

specifi cally to hedge funds, lending them cash and securities and execut-ing their trades, and the relationships can be vital for investment banks as well as being a signifi cant source of revenue.

Credit Suisse is the biggest prime broker among European banks, in an industry that accounted for about $15bn of revenue in 2020.

Prime brokerage generally accounts for about a third of equities revenue across the industry most years.

Since the drama, Credit Suisse has been calling clients to change margin requirements in swap agreements so

they match the more restrictive terms of other prime-brokerage contracts, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Specifi cally, the bank is shifting from static margining to dynamic margining, which may force clients to post more collateral and could reduce the profi tability of some trades.

Swaps are the derivatives Hwang used to make highly leveraged bets on stocks at Archegos and which lie at the heart of the losses.

Credit Suisse is also concerned the woes at the prime brokerage business will impact morale at other parts of the securities business and that it may spark departures, the people said.

The investment bank is keen to take care of top performers, the peo-

ple said. Deutsche Bank sold its prime business to BNP as part of the German bank’s huge 2019 overhaul that in-tended to cut its investment banking business, especially in equities.

The lender, which became a force on Wall Street after the fi nancial cri-sis, had struggled to keep hedge funds clients in recent years after a string of missteps, and client balances declined in the run up to chief executive offi cer Christian Sewing’s decision to sell the business.

Now, at Credit Suisse, CEO Thomas Gottstein — who signalled the bank planned to reduce risk in prime bro-kerage in a Swiss newspaper article — is facing questions from his own star traders, dealmakers and private bank-ers on why the bank’s $4.7bn hit from

Archegos was so much bigger than any of its rivals.

The bank announced a raft of changes within the investment bank because of the loss, including the de-parture of Brian Chin, who led the business.

The head of equities sales and trad-ing Paul Galietto, is stepping down immediately, though will stay through April to assist in the transition, ac-cording to a staff memo earlier this week reviewed by Bloomberg.

The lender also announced three additional exits. Ryan Atkinson, head of credit risk for the invest-ment bank; Ilana Ash, head of coun-terparty credit risk management for that unit and Manish Mehta, head of counterparty hedge fund risk, ac-

cording to the memo. The bank has seen a run of missteps under the fi-nal months of Urs Rohner’s tenure as chairman.

Antonio Horta-Osario is set to take over after the bank’s annual general meeting later this month.

Known for disciplined cost-cutting during his time at Lloyds Banking Group Plc, he may also make further changes.

Gottstein, who pledged a “clean slate” after scandals under his pred-ecessor, is wedged between disgrun-tled staff and his own bosses who are increasingly taking charge.

The board is pushing for a review of the bank’s wider strategy, not just the units that have run into trouble, the people said.

A Credit Suisse logo on the roof of its headquarters in Zurich. Credit Suisse is planning a sweeping overhaul of the hedge fund business at the centre of the Archegos Capital blow up, as the drama forces Wall Street banks to reconsider how they finance some of their most lucrative clients.

Europe markets mark longest weekly winning streak since Nov 2019Reuters, AFPLondon

European stocks were subdued on Friday, but marked their

longest weekly winning streak since November 2019 as hopes of a rapid re-covery in economic growth off set doubts over the eu-rozone’s Covid-19 vaccina-tion programme.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index was up 0.1% after hitting an all-time high at the open, while the UK’s blue-chip FTSE 100 slipped 0.4%. Glo-bal sentiment was under-pinned by the US Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep its super-easy policy in place even as data showed the world’s largest economy kicking into higher gear.

London equities have outperformed this week, with the domestically fo-cused FTSE mid-cap index notching a record high as Britain gradually emerges from a strict winter coro-navirus lockdown.

“While the UK and US have done relatively well on the vaccination roll-out, continental Europe has lagged,” said Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist at BCA Research.

“But they will sort it out later this year.

You’ll see an early re-bound in UK and US econo-mies from Q2 onwards.

In continental Europe, it will be later this year rather than Q2.”

European stocks hit a se-ries of all-time highs this week, despite setbacks on the vaccination front after European regulators found a potential link between AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine and reports of rare brain blood clots.

“The year has been with-out a major correction so far, and with equity infl ows continuing to hit new mul-ti-year highs the sense of ‘irrational exuberance’ is building once again,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG.

“Some measure of cau-tion would seem to be the prudent approach until a more comprehensive con-clusion can be drawn.”

Investors will shift their focus to the US earnings sea-son next week, with profi ts at S&P 500 companies ex-pected to jump 25% in the fi rst quarter, according to Refi nitiv IBES estimate.

Airbus rose 0.3% after the French planemaker re-ported slightly higher de-liveries in the fi rst quarter.

Holiday company TUI fell 2.1% after it said it was raising 350mn euros ($416.33mn) through an issuance of convertible bonds to bolster its fi nanc-es and repay debt.

Stock markets strug-gled to fi nd a direction with traders taking their foot off the pedal before a much-anticipated earnings sea-son that could give fresh impetus to the recent glo-bal equities rally.

“Investors are unsure if

the unwind from growth is over,” remarked OANDA senior analyst Edward Moya.

While some countries are having trouble with coronavirus vaccine pro-grammes, there is a feeling that governments will get a grip on the crisis and their economies will start to ex-pand, though possibly later than previously hoped.

In Europe, stock mar-ket indices in London and Frankfurt traded close to the break even point as trading ended, while in Paris the CAC 40 was es-sentially unchanged.

In midday New York trading, the Dow Jones index had gained a little ground.

In Germany, indus-trial production dropped for the second month in a row in February after eight months of gains, as the economic impact of the pandemic began to bite, of-fi cial data showed Friday.

Analysts said the data raised fresh doubts about the health of Europe’s top economy after it bounced back from a coronavirus-triggered downturn early last year.

Separate data showed Chinese producer prices rose at their fastest pace in more than two years ow-ing to a jump in the cost of commodities.

That has led to concerns the increases will fi lter through to the world econ-omy, putting pressure on central banks as they try to keep borrowing costs down.

Axi strategist Stephen Innes said the fi gures “might add a ripple or two of angst to the infl ation pacifi st calm that has fallen on the market”. The main stocks indices in Hong Kong and Shanghai gave up around 1% as traders kept tabs on China-US re-lations after Washington restricted trade with top Chinese supercomput-ing centres on security grounds.

In the US, Federal Re-serve boss Jerome Powell has again said the bank would stand fast in its pledge to keep borrowing costs at record lows for as long as needed to support recovery in the world’s top economy.

While last week’s block-buster US jobs report was welcome, he said the “re-covery remains uneven and incomplete” and he want-ed to see more of those be-fore he was happy progress was being made.

There remains a concern that strong recovery expec-tations, President Joe Bi-den’s vast spending sprees, and the rollout of vaccines will fan infl ation to a point that the Fed will be forced to hike rates earlier than it intends.

EURO STOXX 50 end-ed fl at at 3,977.46 points; London — FTSE 100 closed down 0.3% to 6,920.15 points; Paris — CAC 40 ended fl at at 6,169.41 points and Frankfurt — DAX 30 closed up 0.2% to 15,227.34 points yesterday.

Apple Inc

Amgen Inc

American Express Co

Boeing Co/The

Caterpillar Inc

Salesforce.Com Inc

Cisco Systems Inc

Chevron Corp

Walt Disney Co/The

Dow Inc

Goldman Sachs Group Inc

Home Depot Inc

Honeywell International Inc

Intl Business Machines Corp

Intel Corp

Johnson & Johnson

Jpmorgan Chase & Co

Coca-Cola Co/The

Mcdonald’s Corp

3M Co

Merck & Co. Inc.

Microsoft Corp

Nike Inc -Cl B

Procter & Gamble Co/The

Travelers Cos Inc/The

Unitedhealth Group Inc

Visa Inc-Class A Shares

Verizon Communications Inc

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc

Walmart Inc

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DJIA

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Anglo American Plc

Associated British Foods Plc

Admiral Group Plc

Ashtead Group Plc

Antofagasta Plc

Auto Trader Group Plc

Aviva Plc

Avast Plc

Aveva Group Plc

Astrazeneca Plc

Bae Systems Plc

Barclays Plc

British American Tobacco Plc

Barratt Developments Plc

Bhp Group Plc

Berkeley Group Holdings/The

British Land Co Plc

B&M European Value Retail Sa

Bunzl Plc

Bp Plc

Burberry Group Plc

Bt Group Plc

Coca-Cola Hbc Ag-Di

Compass Group Plc

Croda International Plc

Crh Plc

Dcc Plc

Diageo Plc

Evraz Plc

Experian Plc

Ferguson Plc

Flutter Entertainment Plc-Di

Fresnillo Plc

Glencore Plc

Glaxosmithkline Plc

#N/A Invalid Security

Hikma Pharmaceuticals Plc

Hargreaves Lansdown Plc

Halma Plc

Hsbc Holdings Plc

Homeserve Plc

Intl Consolidated Airline-Di

Intermediate Capital Group

Intercontinental Hotels Grou

3I Group Plc

Imperial Brands Plc

Informa Plc

Intertek Group Plc

Jd Sports Fashion Plc

Just Eat Takeaway

Johnson Matthey Plc

Kingfisher Plc

Land Securities Group Plc

Legal & General Group Plc

Lloyds Banking Group Plc

#N/A Invalid Security

Mondi Plc

M&G Plc

Melrose Industries Plc

Wm Morrison Supermarkets

National Grid Plc

Natwest Group Plc

Next Plc

Ocado Group Plc

Phoenix Group Holdings Plc

Pennon Group Plc

Polymetal International Plc

Prudential Plc

Persimmon Plc

Pearson Plc

Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc

Royal Dutch Shell Plc-A Shs

Royal Dutch Shell Plc-B Shs

Relx Plc

Rio Tinto Plc

Rightmove Plc

Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc

Rsa Insurance Group Plc

Rentokil Initial Plc

Sainsbury (J) Plc

Schroders Plc

Sage Group Plc/The

Segro Plc

Smurfit Kappa Group Plc

Standard Life Aberdeen Plc

Ds Smith Plc

Smiths Group Plc

Scottish Mortgage Inv Tr Plc

Smith & Nephew Plc

Spirax-Sarco Engineering Plc

Sse Plc

Standard Chartered Plc

St James’s Place Plc

Severn Trent Plc

Tesco Plc

Taylor Wimpey Plc

Unilever Plc

United Utilities Group Plc

Vodafone Group Plc

Wpp Plc

Whitbread Plc

3,083.002,484.003,150.004,573.001,730.00569.40404.60468.003,776.007,287.00515.00185.702,786.00794.602,150.004,634.00512.40547.202,409.00295.002,044.00153.502,413.001,558.506,612.003,528.006,294.003,183.00599.202,653.009,310.0015,295.00894.40288.701,319.600.002,433.001,667.002,559.00437.401,191.00210.151,968.005,162.001,241.001,542.00584.206,054.00917.007,225.003,134.00343.90716.60296.4043.260.001,907.50218.00173.60182.70900.50196.658,296.002,150.00748.601,015.501,458.501,557.503,210.00805.800.001,395.801,335.401,910.505,663.00618.40111.88683.60514.20245.603,626.00652.20972.603,448.00301.50414.801,613.501,192.501,400.0012,240.001,541.50497.501,343.002,406.00234.40190.054,131.00957.80134.64943.603,466.00

-0.03-0.24-1.251.24-0.57-0.97-0.69-0.660.030.61-2.24-1.21-2.541.72-0.881.33-1.390.180.25-1.161.74-1.100.25-1.391.381.23-0.38-0.130.200.230.45-1.20-1.84-1.90-0.150.000.660.001.03-0.590.08-2.05-0.930.00-0.96-1.19-0.980.465.110.32-0.351.69-0.720.99-0.370.000.47-0.270.46-0.87-0.33-0.661.100.610.131.040.210.521.421.050.00-0.96-0.820.32-1.600.820.680.030.780.37-1.06-0.43-0.90-1.46-0.260.121.10-0.790.252.43-0.03-1.411.320.63-0.611.88-0.840.06-1.33-0.69-0.06

2,926,546 684,274 445,851 1,413,781 941,278 1,884,327 8,144,715 1,276,573 228,852 2,436,041 8,153,343 58,776,553 3,880,608 2,294,476 3,661,179 172,483 1,598,656 1,389,185 740,493 40,552,554 731,129 13,240,948 583,284 2,143,389 222,820 722,729 304,613 3,004,334 2,163,627 1,419,059 375,118 192,262 850,961 28,967,301 6,415,635 - 346,981 714,940 569,598 15,730,049 572,317 21,393,019 381,074 333,577 1,083,901 2,251,390 1,795,206 250,903 2,956,500 101,512 649,257 5,147,734 1,489,618 12,123,123 126,690,722 - 875,390 5,739,980 5,665,153 7,273,278 4,642,214 18,459,772 302,908 776,027 1,259,428 913,285 1,418,221 3,025,356 846,210 1,046,616 - 4,315,782 5,229,229 1,920,219 2,184,412 1,746,332 37,194,660 2,031,831 3,005,015 3,564,642 282,015 2,475,558 2,393,263 289,207 3,024,659 3,300,186 587,719 3,447,429 1,988,537 147,707 2,917,026 3,517,607 924,136 492,020 15,027,213 9,355,389 2,644,700 1,512,530 42,179,230 2,004,123 499,018

FTSE 100

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Aeon Co Ltd

Ajinomoto Co Inc

Ana Holdings Inc

Asahi Group Holdings Ltd

Asahi Kasei Corp

Astellas Pharma Inc

Bandai Namco Holdings Inc

Bridgestone Corp

Canon Inc

Central Japan Railway Co

Chubu Electric Power Co Inc

Chugai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd

Dai-Ichi Life Holdings Inc

Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd

Daikin Industries Ltd

Daiwa House Industry Co Ltd

Daiwa Securities Group Inc

Denso Corp

East Japan Railway Co

3,212.002,220.002,458.504,757.001,232.501,636.508,455.004,397.002,576.0015,840.001,348.504,358.001,998.002,990.0022,775.003,268.00575.007,114.007,450.00

0.690.410.661.19-0.080.402.820.211.020.701.12-0.09-0.891.650.730.800.65-0.890.34

1,871,000 1,941,800 2,986,100 1,883,000 3,405,000 5,078,200 1,186,900 1,921,600 5,268,700 632,800 1,239,000 2,512,200 4,787,000 4,031,300 828,700 1,580,900 4,380,400 1,260,100 1,222,000

TOKYO

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Eisai Co Ltd

Eneos Holdings Inc

Fanuc Corp

Fast Retailing Co Ltd

Fujifilm Holdings Corp

Fujitsu Ltd

Hitachi Ltd

Honda Motor Co Ltd

Hoya Corp

Itochu Corp

Japan Exchange Group Inc

Japan Post Holdings Co Ltd

Japan Tobacco Inc

Kansai Electric Power Co Inc

Kao Corp

Kddi Corp

Keyence Corp

Kirin Holdings Co Ltd

Komatsu Ltd

Kubota Corp

Kyocera Corp

M3 Inc

Marubeni Corp

Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings

Mitsubishi Corp

Mitsubishi Electric Corp

Mitsubishi Estate Co Ltd

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Mitsubishi Ufj Financial Gro

Mitsui & Co Ltd

Mitsui Fudosan Co Ltd

Mizuho Financial Group Inc

Ms&Ad Insurance Group Holdin

Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd

Nidec Corp

Nintendo Co Ltd

Nippon Steel Corp

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone

Nissan Motor Co Ltd

Nitori Holdings Co Ltd

Nomura Holdings Inc

Olympus Corp

Ono Pharmaceutical Co Ltd

Oriental Land Co Ltd

Orix Corp

Otsuka Holdings Co Ltd

Panasonic Corp

Recruit Holdings Co Ltd

Resona Holdings Inc

Secom Co Ltd

Sekisui House Ltd

Seven & I Holdings Co Ltd

Shimano Inc

Shin-Etsu Chemical Co Ltd

Shionogi & Co Ltd

Shiseido Co Ltd

Smc Corp

Softbank Corp

Softbank Group Corp

Sompo Holdings Inc

Sony Group Corp

Subaru Corp

Sumitomo Corp

Sumitomo Electric Industries

Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Gr

Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdin

Sumitomo Realty & Developmen

Suzuki Motor Corp

Sysmex Corp

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd

Terumo Corp

Tokio Marine Holdings Inc

Tokyo Electron Ltd

Tokyo Gas Co Ltd

Toray Industries Inc

Toyota Motor Corp

Unicharm Corp

West Japan Railway Co

Z Holdings Corp

7,313.00478.7028,095.0087,890.006,722.0016,695.005,135.003,215.0013,705.003,495.002,875.00930.002,075.501,115.507,335.003,490.0051,810.002,050.003,381.002,466.507,210.008,097.00911.30832.003,046.001,664.001,905.003,360.00582.602,290.002,437.501,560.003,185.009,107.0014,180.0064,850.001,842.502,848.00573.6020,340.00585.002,314.502,802.0016,280.001,821.504,516.001,377.505,223.00449.209,392.002,374.504,312.0026,465.0019,710.005,850.007,483.0066,740.001,442.509,950.004,138.0012,230.002,103.501,544.501,667.004,928.003,873.003,748.003,795.004,797.0011,135.003,750.004,017.005,206.0049,730.002,313.00680.608,418.004,566.005,918.00545.90

0.91-0.830.38-3.402.060.212.66-0.681.48-1.086.25-0.981.290.810.491.071.290.17-1.200.841.441.420.77-0.48-0.650.54-1.27-0.590.10-0.48-0.690.260.03-0.700.890.14-2.872.37-0.120.591.424.850.52-0.280.050.760.99-0.630.270.831.19-2.531.171.731.92-0.530.691.23-0.50-0.362.77-0.92-0.61-1.10-2.40-0.31-0.190.740.48-1.111.132.68-0.46-0.240.67-0.440.00-0.520.58-0.93

TOKYO

Company Name Lt Price % Chg

Ck Hutchison Holdings Ltd

Hang Lung Properties Ltd

Ck Infrastructure Holdings L

Hengan Intl Group Co Ltd

Cspc Pharmaceutical Group Lt

Hang Seng Bank Ltd

China Resources Land Ltd

Ck Asset Holdings Ltd

Sino Biopharmaceutical

Henderson Land Development

Aia Group Ltd

Ind & Comm Bk Of China-H

Sun Hung Kai Properties

New World Development

Geely Automobile Holdings Lt

Xiaomi Corp-Class B

Swire Pacific Ltd - Cl A

Sands China Ltd

Wharf Real Estate Investment

Clp Holdings Ltd

Country Garden Holdings Co

Aac Technologies Holdings In

Wuxi Biologics Cayman Inc

Shenzhou International Group

Ping An Insurance Group Co-H

China Mengniu Dairy Co

Sunny Optical Tech

Boc Hong Kong Holdings Ltd

China Life Insurance Co-H

Citic Ltd

Galaxy Entertainment Group L

Wh Group Ltd

63.2520.8046.5550.909.49153.7036.6047.758.1034.6597.805.50118.4041.1020.7025.7062.1037.1043.4074.759.8339.85102.00167.1091.2044.80178.1027.2015.847.4969.856.92

-0.391.460.220.59-1.660.65-0.680.42-1.220.29-1.310.180.251.23-0.24-1.913.24-3.13-0.34-0.07-1.70-1.36-4.85-2.22-2.20-2.40-2.781.87-0.88-0.27-3.85-1.28

3,645,405 5,175,450 783,749 4,029,541 21,753,608 1,763,288 9,151,324 5,248,415 40,265,820 2,041,077 19,195,186 118,748,891 1,629,559 3,957,980 42,092,518 114,867,435 5,213,231 14,808,184 1,692,905 2,681,452 12,636,243 2,297,430 15,997,297 3,115,040 37,058,501 9,440,569 3,899,215 12,549,235 54,064,461 22,070,724 11,328,572 37,170,218

HONG KONG

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Hong Kong & China Gas

Bank Of Communications Co-H

China Petroleum & Chemical-H

Hong Kong Exchanges & Clear

Bank Of China Ltd-H

Hsbc Holdings Plc

Power Assets Holdings Ltd

Mtr Corp

Techtronic Industries Co Ltd

China Overseas Land & Invest

Tencent Holdings Ltd

China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd

Link Reit

Petrochina Co Ltd-H

Cnooc Ltd

China Construction Bank-H

China Mobile Ltd

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd

12.284.964.06462.802.9946.5545.7544.00139.0019.88620.504.3770.502.737.916.5250.25218.00

0.490.81-1.93-0.300.00-0.640.00-0.11-1.70-0.100.08-0.68-0.14-1.441.15-0.31-0.79-2.24

13,069,321 24,140,606 145,667,338 3,878,615 299,416,664 11,098,917 1,741,811 2,913,757 2,697,967 12,540,478 22,463,921 52,206,124 3,447,651 157,025,849 202,961,518 207,150,755 25,430,243 22,699,587

HONG KONG

Company Name Lt Price % Chg Volume

Adani Ports And Special Econ

Asian Paints Ltd

Axis Bank Ltd

Bajaj Finance Ltd

Bharti Airtel Ltd

Bajaj Auto Ltd

Bajaj Finserv Ltd

Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd

Britannia Industries Ltd

Cipla Ltd

Coal India Ltd

Divi’s Laboratories Ltd

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories

Eicher Motors Ltd

Gail India Ltd

Grasim Industries Ltd

Hcl Technologies Ltd

Housing Development Finance

Hdfc Bank Limited

Hdfc Life Insurance Co Ltd

Hero Motocorp Ltd

Hindalco Industries Ltd

Hindustan Unilever Ltd

Icici Bank Ltd

Indusind Bank Ltd

Infosys Ltd

Indian Oil Corp Ltd

Itc Ltd

Jsw Steel Ltd

Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd

Larsen & Toubro Ltd

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd

Maruti Suzuki India Ltd

Nestle India Ltd

Ntpc Ltd

Oil & Natural Gas Corp Ltd

Power Grid Corp Of India Ltd

Reliance Industries Ltd

Sbi Life Insurance Co Ltd

State Bank Of India

Shree Cement Ltd

Sun Pharmaceutical Indus

Tata Steel Ltd

Tata Consultancy Svcs Ltd

Tech Mahindra Ltd

Titan Co Ltd

Tata Motors Ltd

Upl Ltd

Ultratech Cement Ltd

Wipro Ltd

823.602,630.80668.204,872.30545.253,651.309,629.05425.603,797.70883.05129.503,752.354,760.302,521.60138.801,440.001,045.402,513.901,421.75694.852,912.90361.052,476.00566.20923.651,441.0591.70213.10621.001,799.251,404.10791.156,827.1017,592.40102.80103.80208.301,982.05910.10353.0031,748.75636.75899.503,322.251,053.001,592.00318.20634.906,825.85450.10

0.07-0.75-1.97-3.130.410.04-0.27-1.15-0.504.88-1.631.001.52-1.230.18-0.540.760.45-0.77-0.94-0.52-1.142.74-1.82-1.200.08-1.34-0.071.120.90-1.06-0.500.00-0.55-2.100.19-0.33-1.160.18-0.730.533.66-2.060.152.331.321.35-2.56-2.091.81

SENSEX

Company Name Lt Price % Chg

WORLD INDICESIndices Lt Price Change

GCC INDICESIndices Lt Price Change

Dow Jones Indus. Avg

S&P 500 Index

Nasdaq Composite Index

S&P/Tsx Composite Index

Mexico Bolsa Index

Brazil Bovespa Stock Idx

Ftse 100 Index

Cac 40 Index

Dax Index

Ibex 35 Tr

Nikkei 225

Japan Topix

Hang Seng Index

All Ordinaries Indx

Nzx All Index

Bse Sensex 30 Index

Nse S&P Cnx Nifty Index

Straits Times Index

Karachi All Share Index

Jakarta Composite Index

33,579.934,104.6013,838.8219,201.3247,766.64118,231.206,915.756,169.4115,234.168,565.8029,768.061,959.4728,698.807,252.252,057.0649,591.3214,834.853,184.5430,709.546,070.21

+76.36+7.43+9.51-27.55-421.51-82.00-26.47+3.69+31.48-72.00+59.08+7.61-309.27+1.94-8.41-154.89-38.95-1.86+286.24-1.52

Doha Securities Market

Kuwait Stocks Exchange

Oman Stock Market

10,541.53

4,772.62

3,708.88

+43.20

+27.35

-5.61

“Information contained herein is believed to be reliable and had been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. The accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. This publication is for providing information only and is not intended as an off er or solicitation for a purchase or sale of any of the financial instruments mentioned. Gulf Times and Doha Bank or any of their employees shall not be held accountable and will not accept any losses or liabilities for actions based on this data.”

859,100 12,273,200 1,002,700 1,430,300 1,731,900 613,000 4,369,700 3,390,400 859,100 4,407,200 2,906,300 6,663,900 4,628,100 1,693,700 1,600,800 5,637,100 445,400 4,840,600 2,868,500 2,936,600 1,293,000 3,865,400 6,132,100 4,487,300 3,174,200 3,732,900 4,236,200 971,500 53,585,000 4,711,900 3,144,200 6,104,200 958,900 1,729,900 1,561,300 709,900 5,972,900 6,592,500 16,676,300 256,600 19,497,900 6,396,900 1,218,900 514,600 2,866,300 1,077,700 7,813,100 3,484,800 9,747,800 636,800 2,706,400 4,313,700 231,200 1,693,600 1,025,300 1,140,300 183,200 11,884,900 10,444,800 610,800 4,432,600 2,961,300 3,521,800 2,005,600 2,222,800 5,660,800 1,142,900 1,362,700 1,347,300 484,300 7,572,400 3,251,000 1,714,600 1,173,500 1,574,300 5,050,800 6,017,900 951,500 1,064,700 26,108,700

21,804,785 1,185,017 12,509,114 2,902,646 11,426,998 484,807 328,699 4,089,592 526,934 11,189,432 10,149,401 1,247,594 1,362,147 719,036 8,347,169 1,125,347 3,708,082 3,234,017 14,078,908 1,586,783 557,093 16,371,164 2,604,858 23,239,564 4,980,026 6,052,712 10,297,316 16,364,247 51,062,079 3,139,384 2,015,002 2,065,092 641,327 73,944 19,751,417 17,645,822 6,622,326 6,478,482 1,344,813 46,473,100 146,698 16,755,446 32,179,069 2,911,129 6,029,994 3,569,146 75,462,572 4,995,747 592,763 11,699,385

Volume

Volume

Traders work at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The DAX 30 closed up 0.2% to 15,227.34 points yesterday.

BUSINESS5Gulf Times

Saturday, April 10, 2021

BUSINESSGulf Times Saturday, April 10, 20216

Pioneer to buy DoublePoint in $6.4bn Permian dealBloombergNew York

Pioneer Natural Resources Co is buying DoublePoint En-ergy LLC in a deal valued at

$6.4bn, less than three months af-ter completing its purchase of fel-low shale driller Parsley Energy Inc as it expands in the US Permian Ba-sin.

The deal is comprised of ap-proximately 27.2mn shares of Pio-neer common stock, $1bn of cash and assumption of approximately $900mn of debt and liabilities, ac-cording to a statement from Pio-neer.

The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter.

Bloomberg News reported earlier that the companies were close to an agreement.

Pioneer will increase its position to more than 1mn net acres through the deal, acquiring “primarily undrilled” new land.

“DoublePoint has amassed an im-pressive, high quality footprint in the Midland Basin,” Pioneer chief executive offi cer Scott D Sheffi eld said in the statement, referring to land within the larger Permian shale play.

The deal will generate “signifi cant value for our shareholders.”

The acquisition will be one of the largest in North America’s oil indus-try this year, and the fi rst big trans-action since the rapid run-up in oil prices to more than $60 a barrel over the past fi ve months.

DoublePoint’s investors include Apollo Global Management Inc, Quantum Energy Partners, Magnetar Capital and Blackstone Group Inc’s GSO Capital Partners.

Sheffi eld is expanding in the Per-mian Basin in the aftermath of the

worst oil-industry collapse in his-tory.

Crude prices have advanced 27% this year, more than erasing 2020’s slump, amid increasing optimism that economies will continue to reo-pen, sparking demand for gasoline, diesel and other fuels.

The deal is the latest in a series of transactions as US drillers consoli-date in an eff ort to survive the up-heavals caused by the pandemic.

Pioneer in October agreed to buy Parsley Energy for $4.5bn in stock, which followed a $9.7 takeover by ConocoPhillips of Concho Resources Inc. “Pioneer is favourably posi-tioned to emerge as one of the large, independent survivors of Permian consolidation,” Bloomberg Intelli-gence Senior Industry Analyst Vin-cent G Piazza said in a note.

The company’s recent deals have created “a formidable rival in the

basin, with enviable scale and asset concentration.”

DoublePoint was founded by co-CEOs Cody Campbell and John Sell-ers, who made their names fl ipping drilling leases in the Eagle Ford re-gion of South Texas in the early days of the US shale boom before moving on to the more lucrative Permian Ba-sin.

There they assembled large hold-ings with backing from private equity

fi rms including Apollo. In 2017, the pair sold rights to about 70,000 acres to Parsley for $2.8bn.

Shortly thereafter, they raised more money, formed DoublePoint and set to work snapping up drilling rights in the Permian’s Midland sub-region.

DoublePoint was running seven drilling rigs and was on course to pro-duce 80,000 barrels of oil a day as of the fi rst quarter this year.

Spain cuts 2021 growth forecast to 6.5% after first-quarter contraction

ReutersMadrid

Spain’s government slashed its forecast for this year’s economic recovery yesterday to reflect a Covid-induced contraction in the first quarter and expected delays to the arrival of EU rescue funds.The government now expects gross do-mestic product to grow 6.5% in 2021, down from a previous estimated range of 7.2%-9.8%, Economy Minister Nadia Calvino told a news conference.With its economy — the eurozone’s fourth-largest — highly dependent on foreign tourism, Spain suff ered more than most developed countries during the first year of the pandemic, posting a record contrac-tion of 10.8% in 2020.A third wave of the coronavirus hit the country in the first two months of the year, and a massive snowstorm also disrupted activity in much of Spain in January.“The recovery is delayed by one quarter,” Calvino said, adding however that the government expected a strong increase in the second half of 2021.The Bank of Spain had already lowered its 2021 growth forecast for similar reasons to 6%, while the International Monetary Fund expects a 6.4% expansion.As global vaccination eff orts ramp up, the economy should expand by 7% in 2022, with output recovering to pre-pandemic levels by the end of that year, Calvino said, before slowing down to 3.5% in 2023 and 2.1% in 2024.Unemployment should stabilise at 15% this year and slowly recede through 2024, thanks to the cushioning eff ect of the ERTE government furlough scheme, which should keep jobless figures well below the record high of 27% seen in the last financial crisis.The disbursement of €140bn ($166.40bn) in European Union recovery funds over the next three years — around half in grants — will further boost the economy, but most of the impact will not be felt until 2022.Calvino had estimated last year that the funds would lift growth to 9.8% in 2021.

BUSINESS7Gulf Times

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Tweets, receipts and Peloton riders: Foodmakers embrace big dataBloomberg

When a handful of teens took to social media to complain about the paltry size of their microwavea-ble mac and cheese, Big Food was paying attention.At Kraft Heinz Co, the corporate behemoth that’s responsible for a lot of the items in your pantry right now, a “social listening team” picked up on that chatter in the summer of 2019. Months later – lightning speed in the food world – Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Big Bowls were on store shelves.Tracking social media buzz is one of the newly honed tools in Kraft’s data collection toolbox, and both the company and its packaged-food peers are increasingly thinking about how they gather and use information like this to speed product development.“For a food brand it’s really no longer about who has the biggest factory, or who has the biggest me-dia budget,” said Taylor Smith, a partner at Boston Consulting Group. “It’s about what data you have and how you use it.”From Kraft to General Mills Inc to Conagra Brands Inc, big foodmakers are finally warming to analytics as they try to become nimbler and more responsive to consumer whims. A pandemic-driven rise in on-line shopping and grocery delivery has widened the trove of data available to food companies that have long struggled to gain insight into shopping trends because retailers, not manufacturers, have been the gatekeepers to most shopper transactions.And Big Food isn’t just keeping an eye on Twitter

feeds or delivery orders. Some companies are grab-bing cell-phone tracking info, scouring customers’ grocery receipts and keeping tabs on how long it takes to clean up dinner. Conagra is even moni-toring Peloton subscriptions to gauge whether shoppers would be more inclined to buy health food versus junk food, and tweaking its marketing accordingly.Data analytics are shaping up to be a critical factor in determining which food companies can thrive in a post-pandemic world. Americans have turned back to old pantry stalwarts over the past year, giving new life to staid brands that had been losing out to smaller competitors. But investors are realis-ing not everyone can hold onto those gains once the economy opens back up and people eat less at home. Pandemic outperformers like Clorox Co are facing similar questions about how they’ll fare once things get back to normal.An S&P index of consumer staples stocks is up about 27% in the past year, the best 12-month performance in that period in over a decade. Yet that pales in comparison to the 63% surge in the broader S&P 500. And foodmakers like Campbell Soup Co. and Kellogg Co are among the worst performers in that consumer index, which also includes toilet-paper manufacturers, grocery stores and cigarette makers.For other industries, the use of analytics is nothing new – everything from banking to health care to retail has been reshaped by user data. But large food manufacturers have been late to the party.

With long-established brands like Betty Crocker and Oscar Mayer, market-leading companies have been largely content to drive sales through traditional advertising or simple name recognition.One obstacle they’ve long faced is in data collec-tion. Since the products are generally sold through grocery stores rather than directly to consumers, food makers have less insight into the details of the transaction, including what other products custom-ers are buying. The largest consumer packaged goods companies have only one-tenth the size of customer databases compared with retail peers, according to Boston Consulting Group’s data.A rise in delivery and growing direct-to-consumer eff orts that accelerated in 2020 have started to shift the balance. The data available through e-com-merce is similar in many ways to what supermarket loyalty programs already off ered, but it’s now available at a much larger scale and more quickly, explained Bob Nolan, who leads Conagra’s insights and analytics team. Merchants can see what shop-pers purchased, what they clicked on but didn’t purchase, what else was in their baskets and what they’ve bought over time.Manufacturers are also getting more creative in the ways they’re getting information. Besides Peloton subscriptions, Conagra gathers data on recipe searches online and appliance sales to tailor its marketing eff orts. Ovens are the second most-used kitchen appliance after stovetops, said Nolan. So when his team saw sheet-pan meals was a popular search on Pinterest, it launched sheet-pan-ready

Birds Eye Oven Roasters in six months. When air fryers became hot, the company made videos for social media showing how to make its broccoli bites and cauliflower wings in the device. Conagra has sold $27mn of oven roasters over the past year. Food companies “have tried to listen to the con-sumer and make themselves more relevant in terms of taste and ingredients,” said Nicholas Fereday, a consumer foods analyst at Rabobank. “They are playing in an area that traditionally we assumed the small brands had an upper hand in because they are more socially savvy.”Kraft’s super-sized mac and cheese shows just how savvy the big players are becoming. The product was developed quickly and is now outperforming internal expectations. Without the kind of social media monitoring that Kraft has been refining, “this could be a multi-year process because you’ve missed your annual planning window,” said US chief growth off icer Sanjiv Gajiwala.Some companies are still employing more old-school methods, like focus groups and consumer surveys. On a recent investor call, JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Ken Goldman pressed Campbell Soup for any data that could help the company confidently pre-dict consumer behaviour post-pandemic, leading chief executive off icer Mark Clouse to acknowledge that its predictions are merely “theoretical.”The problem isn’t with Campbell specifically, Gold-man told Bloomberg in an e-mail. Many companies rely on optimistic consumer surveys that aren’t nec-essarily reliable in such an uncertain environment.

“Consumers don’t know what they are going to do in a year,” he said. Post-pandemic life is “uncharted waters.”But while data usage is on the rise, Big Food’s embrace of analytics brings some challenges. At the top of the list: It brings risks of privacy issues for customers, who may not always realise how much information they’re handing over.In 2019, General Mills altered its Box Tops for Education programme in a way that turned it into a significant data collection operation. Rather than clip box tops, shoppers are now directed to upload scans of their grocery receipts to an app, showing the company what else they bought along with the company’s products.“We’ll have the history of your shopping trips, will understand what products you like,” said North American retail president Jon Nudi. The company can tailor its coupons based on how long since you last purchased a General Mills product – or a competing item. “If we know you like Cheerios but you haven’t bought it, we can serve up a promotion on Cheerios.”Participants can block out other receipt items if they’d like, the company says. Still, the change has drawn criticism on social media and other sites such as parenting forums on Reddit.But Big Food isn’t exactly Big Brother, according to Ray Yu, a partner at Boston Consulting Group. The data gathered tends to be aggregated on a macro scale, helping companies identify broader trends, he said.

UPS bets on electric aircraft to get packages to the hinterlandsBloombergNew York

United Parcel Service Inc is buying 10 small electric-powered aircraft that take off like helicopters and fly like planes, aiming to reduce its costs from contracting with small air freighters to reach far-flung areas.The first delivery of the ALIA-250 from Stone Point Capital-backed Beta Technologies is expected in 2024, UPS said in a statement on Wednesday, and the courier has an option to acquire as many as 150. While the vehicles will be piloted, UPS already envisions drone versions that could fly on their own and would be less costly to operate.For all the hype surrounding potential passenger-carrying air taxis, UPS’s foray into electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

signals that freight delivery is likely to be one of the first industries to take advantage of the technology. FedEx Corp is experimenting with pilotless Cessna 208 cargo aircraft and Slovenia-based Pipistrel, which makes light propeller planes, expects to start delivering cargo drones in two years.Still, there are big hurdles for eVTOLs, even for freight, including a limited range and heavy batteries. The business case for the next-generation technology is in its early stages, spurring caution among analysts such as Richard Aboulafia.February’s $3.8bn merger of air-taxi startup Archer Aviation with a blank-check company backed by investment banker Ken Moelis and United Airlines Holdings Inc, is a red flag that the eVTOL market is too frothy, said Aboulafia, an aerospace consultant for Teal Group.Investment pouring into the industry reminds

him of the early 2000s, when startups rushed to develop so-called personal jets. That industry dissolved with the 2008 financial crisis and all the investment turned to dust, Aboulafia said.“There’s now the same combination of lots of cash looking for a home and a high degree of techno-utopia,” he said.

Cost estimates

Beta’s aircraft has four rotors on top and a propeller in the back. The company says it can travel 250 nautical miles (290 miles, 460km) on a charge and can tote as much as 1,400 pounds (635kg) of cargo. That will limit the vehicle’s use since the typical small freighter UPS uses can carry about 3,500 pounds and has a range of roughly 1,200 nautical miles.While UPS didn’t disclose the price, Beta’s ALIA-250 lists for $4mn each, though large

purchases bring a discount, said Kyle Clark, chief executive off icer of the South Burlington, Vermont-based manufacturer.Clark, a plane and helicopter pilot, estimated that the operating cost of an eVTOL is about half that of a small cargo plane, mostly because of fuel and maintenance savings.It costs about $380,000 to overhaul a Cessna 208 engine, which is needed after about 3,000 flight hours. Overhauling the ALIA-250’s electric motors is expected to cost a third less and wouldn’t be necessary until 10,000 hours, he said in an interview.

Skirting traffi c

UPS could also save by reducing the need for trucks and – at some point – pilots.Juan Perez, chief information and engineering off icer at the Atlanta-based courier, said the aircraft will be nimble enough to land

at a sorting centre’s parking lot, allowing the courier to avoid using small air-freight contractors and trucks to get packages from its main hubs to facilities in remote areas, such as North Dakota.“It will allow us to bypass a lot of the handoff s that take place today with using the typical small airplanes,” Perez said in an interview.UPS expects to use the eVTOL in more populated areas as the aircraft’s safety is established. Perez envisions flying packages in bulk, for example, to downtown Atlanta from the city’s airport, skirting metropolitan area traff ic.If the aircraft can be operated as a drone, it promises to be even more cost-eff ective. Autonomous flights would be on routes currently served by contractors, so they wouldn’t aff ect UPS’s union pilots, who fly large cargo jets, Perez said.

US producer pricesincrease by more than forecast in MarchBloombergWashington

US producer prices climbed more than fore-cast last month in a broad

advance, indicating infl ation-ary pressures continue to build across the nation’s economy.

The producer price index for fi nal demand increased 1% in March from the prior month af-ter a 0.5% gain in February, the Labour Department said yes-terday. The gain was twice the median projection in a Bloomb-erg survey of economists as cost increases for goods and services accelerated.

The data, typically scheduled for release at 8:30am New York time, was delayed on the gov-ernment’s website. The S&P 500 was little changed in early trad-ing and the yield on the bench-mark 10-year Treasury note in-creased.

Excluding volatile food and energy components, the so-called core PPI increased 0.7% from a month earlier.

The monthly advance in the index led to a 4.2% increase in the overall PPI from March 2020, when the pandemic caused prices to retreat. That was the sharpest annual gain since 2011.

Given major infl ation met-rics declined at the start of the pandemic, year-over-year fi g-ures will quickly accelerate — a development referred to as the base eff ect. The upward dis-tortion will also appear in the closely-watched consumer price index report on Tuesday.

Producer prices, which have the potential of being passed on to consumers, are rising at a brisk pace, adding fuel to an already-intense debate about

the future path of infl ation in the coming months.

The cost of goods climbed 1.7% in March, the most in records to December 2009. More than 25% of that gain was due to an 8.8% spike in gasoline prices. Services costs climbed 0.7%, the third straight gain and fuelled by increased margins at retailers and wholesalers.

Shortages of materials have driven up input prices at the same time producers are con-tending with higher shipping costs and bottlenecks — devel-opments Federal Reserve policy

makers view as delivering only a temporary boost to infl ation.

Fed chairman Jerome Powell, during a virtual panel on Thurs-day, said that while price pres-sures are expected to rise as the economy reopens, the pickup in infl ation will likely be tempo-rary.

“We would be monitoring in-fl ation expectations very care-fully. If we see them moving per-sistently and materially above levels we’re comfortable with, then we’d react to that,” Powell said.

Producer prices excluding

food, energy, and trade services — a measure often preferred by economists because it strips out the most volatile components — rose 0.6% in March from a month earlier and increased 3.1% from the same period last year.

The Institute for Supply Man-agement’s prices paid indexes for both manufacturers and service providers have surged to the highest since 2008 in re-cent months amid supply chain disruptions, limited availability of materials and surging input prices.

Some business executives have noted plans to raise con-sumer prices, which could drive up infl ation measures like next week’s CPI. A surge in pent-up demand — along with a massive injection of fi scal aid — should support an acceleration in con-sumer prices, but it’s unclear whether price gains will be sus-tained.

But if none or only some of these price increases can be passed to consumers, pressure on profi t margins could develop if fi rms have diffi culty cutting costs elsewhere.

Men load wood into a burner while boiling maple sap in the evaporator in their sugar shack at Grossman Brothers Maple Products in Claridon, Ohio. The US producer price index for final demand increased 1% in March from the prior month after a 0.5% gain in February, the Labour Department said yesterday.

Norway wealth fund should invest in fewer companies, says govt

Take Friday afternoons off this summer, PwC tells UK staff

ReutersOslo

Norway’s $1.3tn wealth fund, the world’s largest, should reduce the size of its global company reference index by between 25% and 30% to better follow up companies, primarily by remov-ing small cap stocks, the finance ministry proposed yesterday.The move reflects the growing awareness among international investors about risk in the envi-ronmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) field, in which the Norwegian wealth fund has often set the pace.The fund’s reference index would be cut to around 6,600 firms from 8,800 companies presently, the ministry said in its annual recommendation to parliament.The fund should also exclude for now more companies from emerging markets, in the index governing its investment, it said.The fund currently holds stakes in around 9,100 companies, and a smaller reference index could, over time, lead to a cut in the number of companies owned.“We see a high number of com-panies leads to higher costs... and leads to a more complex

follow-up of companies,” Fi-nance Minister Jan Tore Sanner told reporters.“To reduce the number of companies … will to a very little extent increase the risk (for the return of the fund) and lead to a better follow-up (of companies).”The fund pools the Norwegian state’s revenues from oil and gas production and invests them abroad in stocks, bonds, property and renewable energy projects.The government rules in a mi-nority and must win the support of other parties in parliament to pass its proposals.The fund uses the FTSE Global All Cap index from the FTSE Rus-sell index as the basis for its own reference index.“In emerging markets, there are, to a greater extent, weaker institutions, fewer protection of minority shareholders and so it is more challenging to have a re-sponsible investment strategy,” Sanner told Reuters.The fund’s management, Norges Bank Investment Management, can still invest in emerging markets if it so decides.But being excluded from the reference index means the fund would invest in fewer emerging market stocks than they would had they been included.

Bloomberg

PricewaterhouseCoopers will give UK staff on Friday afternoons off this summer and allow them to choose the amount of time they spend working from home as part of a post-pandemic shakeup of working patterns.The accountancy firm announced its hybrid working model would include “a reduced working day” at the end of the week during July and August, and anticipates most of its 22,000 staff will clock off at lunchtime after a more compact working week.The announcement comes as

companies grapple to work out what post-pandemic working patterns will look like after workers who have spent months working remotely start returning to the off ice.PwC will allow its employees to choose the times they start and finish their working days, and expect their staff to spend between 40% to 60% of their time with their colleagues, either in off ices or at client sites, it said in a statement.The firm will take a phased ap-proach to introducing the new policies, after telling its employ-ees in England and Wales this week that its off ices are open for those who want to go.

BUSINESSSaturday, April 10, 2021

GULF TIMES

Made in USA reflation trade is a globally unwanted exportBloombergWashington

The US bond tantrum is sending a chill through indebted countries which have for years paid less to borrow more.As the American economy powers ahead, government bond yields from Australia to Italy are taking the cue and following those of the US upwards. Those higher costs threaten to undermine a flagging recovery in Europe, which is losing control of the pandemic and extending curbs. They’re also unwelcome for emerging markets reliant on dollar funding.“This is something investors are watch-ing,” said Thomas Wacker, head of credit at UBS Global Wealth Management. “Any increase in interest rate costs reduces countries’ fiscal headroom and adds to

future deficits when it could have been spent on investments and reforms. Debt sustainability is a valid concern.”Yields on Group of Seven government debt have more than doubled since the start of the year after climbing 27 basis points to 0.48%, according to Bloomberg Barclays index data, as Treasury yields set a blistering pace. US 10-year yields traded at 1.72% as of 7:17am in New York, near a 14-month high set at the end of March.While it’s hard to pin down how much of that is down to what’s happening in the Treasury market, analysts at ING Groep NV point to the US as the driver, going as far as to assert that no reflation trade would be happening in Europe in a world in which it was isolated from the US.Regardless of whether they can blame run-it-hot American economic policy,

the rising price of government debt has become a headache for policymakers and investors alike.In an interview with Bloomberg Televi-sion, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde last week said that policymakers won’t shy away from us-ing all their powers to stop bond yields moving higher. The ECB has accelerated bond buying to push back against rising borrowing costs.The math goes something like this: Every 10 basis-point move across Europe’s debt structure would translate into about €11bn ($12.9bn) of annual interest. That’s based on a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the region’s debt at €11tn, according to Eu-ropean Commission data, and the average rate of interest at 1.6%, or €181.42bn over a four-quarter rolling period.For now, funding conditions in the euro

region are still low compared with costs of existing debt. Italian 10-year bonds sold with a coupon of 4.75% almost a decade ago are likely to be refinanced at a much lower rate given their current yield of 0.631%.Across the Atlantic, there’s even less cause for worry, this year anyway. Interest pay-ments on the national debt fell last year and are on track to continue sliding – even after all the pandemic spending and amid the highest 10-year borrowing costs in a year.But a period of belt-tightening down the line could harm the economic recovery and eventually require more stimulus from central banks, according to Mark Nash, a money manager at Jupiter Investment Management.“The market will have to look for austerity in the future,” Nash said. “There is just

too much debt. The recovery is masking this so far, but fragilities are growing for markets.”Nash says the “canary in the coal mine” is the developing world, already feeling the impact of rising costs to borrow in US dollars. A benchmark gauge of emerging-market stocks has trimmed gains to just 3.4% for the year amid concern poorer nations will lag eff orts to deliver vaccines to their population and stimulus to their economies.Emerging-market nations owe more than $4tn in dollar debt, according to estimates from the Bank for International Settlements. The burden gets bigger as US yields rise, with the potential that their debt troubles spill over into other markets, according to Nash.While the causes are diff erent from the taper talk that wreaked havoc on markets

in 2013, there may be parallels with the chaos sparked by then Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke suggesting monetary stimulus would be pared at some point in the future.This time bond markets have become unruly because the US has unleashed tril-lions of dollars in fiscal stimulus, according to Steve Major, the head of fixed-income research at HSBC Holdings Plc.“For all the talk of another taper tantrum, we may have already had something simi-lar but this time it was brought on by the government’s aggressive fiscal loosening. Shall we call it a ‘fiscal tantrum’?” Major said. “Whatever the reason, the economy is not going to be helped by higher yields.”Germany, France, Spain and Austria will sell bonds totalling almost €21bn, accord-ing to Commerzbank AG. Germany is expected to redeem €21bn.

US fossil-fuel firms took billions in tax breaks — and then laid off thousandsFigures show 77 companies received $8.2bn under tax changes related to Covid relief and yet almost every one let workers go

Guardian News & MediaWashington

Fossil-fuel companies have received bil-lions of dollars in tax benefits from the US government as part of coronavirus relief measures, only to lay off tens of thousands of their workers during the pandemic, new figures reveal.A group of 77 firms involved in the extrac-tion of oil, gas and coal received $8.2bn under tax-code changes that formed part of a major pandemic stimulus bill passed by Congress last year.Five of these companies also got benefits from the paycheck protection programme, totalling more than $30mn.Despite this, almost every one of the

fossil-fuel companies laid off workers, with a more than 58,000 people losing their jobs since the onset of the pandemic, or around 16% of the combined workforces.The largest beneficiary of government assistance has been Marathon Petroleum, which has got $2.1bn in tax benefits.However, in the year to December 2020, the Ohio-based refining company laid off 1,920 workers, or around 9% of its workforce.As a comparative ratio, Marathon has received around $1m for each worker it made redundant, according to Bailout-Watch, a nonprofit advocacy group that analysed Securities and Exchange Com-mission filings to compile all the data.Phillips 66, Vistra Corp, National Oilwell Varco and Valero were the next largest ben-eficiaries of the tax-code changes, with all of them also laying off workers in the past year.In the case of National Oilwell Varco, a Houston-headquartered drilling supply company, 22% of the workforce was fired,

despite federal government tax assistance amounting to $591m.Other major oil and gas companies including Devon Energy and Occidental Petroleum also took in major pandemic tax benefits in the last year while also shedding thousands of workers.“I’m not surprised that these companies took advantage of these tax benefits, but I’m horrified by the layoff s after they got this money,” said Chris Kuveke, a researcher at BailoutWatch.“Last year’s stimulus was about keeping the economy going, but these companies didn’t use these resources to retain their workers. These are companies that are polluting the environment, increasing the deadliness of the pandemic and letting go of their workers.”The tax benefits stems from a change in the Cares Act from March last year that allowed companies that had made a loss since 2013 to use this to off set their taxes, receiving this refund as a payment.

The extended carry-back benefit was embraced by the oil and gas industry, with many companies suff ering losses even before Covid-19 hit.Pandemic shutdowns then severely curtailed travel by people for business or pleasure, dealing a major blow to fossil-fuel companies through the plummeting use of oil, with the price of a barrel of oil even entering negative territory at one point last year.A spokesman for Marathon, the one com-pany to answer questions on the layoff s, said the business made “the very diff icult decision” to reduce its workforce, provid-ing severance and extended healthcare benefits to those aff ected.“These diff icult decisions were part of a broader, comprehensive eff ort, which also included implementing strict capital dis-cipline and overall expense management to lower our cost structure, to improve the company’s resiliency, and re-position it for long-term success,” the spokesman said.

“We look forward to better days ahead for everyone as the nation emerges from the pandemic.”This expense management didn’t extend to the pay of Marathon’s chief executive, Michael Hennigan, who made $15.5mn in 2020.Hennigan, appointed to the position last year, was paid around $1m more than the 2019 income of his predecessor, Lee Tillman.According to BailoutWatch, Marathon’s chief executive is paid 99 times the aver-age company worker’s salary.“They had no problem paying their execu-tives for good performance when they didn’t perform well,” said Kuveke. “There is no problem with working Americans retaining their jobs but I don’t believe we should subsidise an industry that has been supported by the government for the past 100 years. It’s time to stop subsidising them and start facing the climate crisis.”Faced by growing political and societal

pressure in their role in the climate crisis and the deaths of millions of people each year through air pollution, the oil and gas industry has sought to paint itself as the protector of thousands of American workers who face joblessness due to Joe Biden’s climate policies.“Targeting specific industries with new taxes would only undermine the nation’s economic recovery and jeopardise good-paying jobs, including union jobs,” said Frank Macchiarola, senior vice-president for policy, economic and regulatory aff airs at lobby group American Petroleum Insti-tute, following Biden’s announcement of a new climate-focused infrastructure plan.“It’s important to note that our industry receives no special tax treatment, and we will continue to advocate for a tax code that supports a level playing field for all economic sectors along with poli-cies that sustain and grow the billions of dollars in government revenue that we help generate.”

Boeing reveals ‘potential’ 737 MAX electrical issueAFPParis

US aircraft manufacturer Boeing said yes-terday it had recommended that 16 cli-ents fl ying its 737 MAX models address

a “potential electrical issue”, a new setback for its most popular plane.

Boeing managed to get the 737 MAX back into the air late last year after it was grounded for 20 months following two fatal crashes, and recently announced an order for 100 of the air-craft as the airline sector begins to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Boeing has recommended to 16 customers that they address a potential electrical issue in a specifi c group of 737 MAX airplanes prior to further operations,” the company said in a statement yesterday.

The potential problem identifi ed yesterday requires “verifi cation that a suffi cient ground

path exists for a component of the electrical power system”, it said.

Electrical systems must be grounded to avoid overloads that can cause serious failures.

Boeing did not say which airlines were con-cerned nor did it give the number of aircraft involved.

The plane maker did say it was “working closely” with the US Federal Aviation Adminis-tration (FAA) and would direct clients on how to resolve the issue.

The 737 MAX has been a huge hit with air-lines, and was Boeing’s best-selling aircraft until it was grounded in March 2019.

Around 450 of the planes have been delivered to date to 49 airlines or aircraft leasing compa-nies.

After the Covid-19 crisis hammered the air transport sector, airlines cancelled hundreds of orders however.

Boeing currently has more than 400 aircraft waiting to be delivered to clients, and does not

expect to eliminate that stock until sometime next year.

The MAX was grounded after 346 people died in two crashes — the 2018 Lion Air disaster in Indonesia and an Ethiopian Airlines crash the following year.

Investigators said a main cause of both crash-es was a faulty fl ight handling system known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmenta-tion System, or MCAS.

The FAA in mid-November cleared the MAX to return to service following upgrades to the plane and pilot training protocols.

Other regulators have followed suit since then.

Commercial fl ights resumed in December 2020 with Brazilian airline Gol, then in the US and Canada.

It is still grounded in China.On March 29, US carrier Southwest Airlines

said it had agreed to buy 100 more Boeing 737 MAX planes, providing a key vote of confi dence.

Other signifi cant orders had already been announced by Ryanair, United Airlines and in-vestment fi rm 777 Partners.

The Southwest order, which includes options on another 155 new MAX planes, is the big-gest for the model since regulators cleared it to resume service.

Major airlines continue to burn through cash due to low travel volumes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the sector expects to rebound this year.

Meanwhile, Boeing continues to face liti-gation from families of victims who died in crashes on Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines fl ights.

In January, Boeing agreed to pay $2.5bn in fi nes to settle a criminal probe with the US De-partment of Justice over claims the company defrauded regulators overseeing the 737 MAX.

The industrial catastrophe has cost Boeing billions of dollars and seriously damaged its reputation.

Fortnite maker and Appleduel in filings as App Storetrial nears

AFPSan Francisco

Epic Games and Apple duelled in legal filings ahead of a trial over whether to break the iPhone maker’s tight grip on the App Store.Epic, the maker of the massively popular Fortnite game, accused Apple on Thursday of trapping people in its mobile device world and collecting “outsized commis-sion” at the App Store that serves as the only source of digital content.Apple countered that it has no monopoly when it comes to digital games and that the suit is part of an eff ort by Epic to por-tray “Apple as the ‘bad guy’ so that it can revive flagging interest in Fortnite.”Apple pulled Fortnite from its App Store in August of last year after Epic released an update that dodges revenue sharing with the iPhone maker, and the companies are now locked in a legal battle.A trial in the case is set to begin May 3 in US federal court near San Francisco.Apple chief Tim Cook as well as Epic founder and top executive Tim Sweeney are among those expected to testify.“Apple constructed the iOS ecosystem, using a combination of technical and contractual means, to restrict distribution of iOS apps, foreclosing competition, harm-ing the competitive process, and harming consumers,” Epic contended in a filing.The iOS software runs Apple mobile devices.The App Store is home to more than 1.8mn apps worldwide, generating billions of dol-lars in revenue for developers since it was launched in 2008.People spent $70.3bn at the App Store last year alone, according to market tracker Statista.Apple’s commission on App Store transac-tions ranges from 15% to 30%, and the online shop has been part of the Silicon Valley titan’s eff ort to ramp up revenue from digital content and services.Epic has called the App Store bite of trans-actions an “Apple Tax” and contended that the vetting of apps there is “cursory.”Apple maintains that the commission is standard for the market, and is warranted given the company’s investments in secu-rity, privacy and innovation.It has argued that Epic “would like to reap the benefits of the App Store without pay-ing anything for them.”Apple said Epic has benefited from the iOS ecosystem with some 130mn down-loads in 174 countries, which earned Epic more than half a billion dollars, before changing its tune and seeking “special treatment.”The dispute comes with Apple and other tech giants facing increased scrutiny for their dominance in various economic sec-tors, allowing them to grow even as much of the economy contracts from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

A Boeing 737 MAX airplane prepares to land after a test flight in Seattle, Washington, on September 30, 2020. “Boeing has recommended to 16 customers that they address a potential electrical issue in a specific group of 737 MAX airplanes prior to further operations,” the company said in a statement yesterday.